Shorts
by Smileyfax
Summary: Simply a collection of previously-unpublished  to this website, at least  Daria ficlets of various stripes. Anything too short to post on its own will end up here.
1. Imma Let Daria Finish

"And so, I give you the winner of this year's Lawndale High School Diane Fossey Award for dazzling academic achievement in the face of near-total misanthropy...Ms. Daria Morgendorffer!"

Shocked, Daria approached the podium to accept the award.

"Um...thank you," she began, an impromptu speech. "I'm not much for public speaking, or much for speaking, or, come to think of it, much for the public. And I'm not very good at lying. So let me just say that-"

Suddenly, Kanye West jumped up on stage and seized the microphone from Daria. "Yo Daria, I'm really happy for you and I'm-a let you finish, but Andrea was one of the best misanthropes of all time." Kevin, clueless as ever, cheered loudly from the audience (which was otherwise shocked silent). "One of the best misanthropes of all time!" Kanye repeated. The musician gave the microphone back to Daria and left the stage.

Daria was unable to speak further, as she just stood there opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water.

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This untitled ficlet was written as a response to the infamous upstaging of Taylor Swift (or was it Taylor Hicks?) at the VMAs by Kanye West. If you're not familiar with the incident in question, go check Youtube or something. 


	2. Itchy and Scratchy and Jane

Daria and Jane were walking to school, as was their wont.

"Did you study for your math test?" Daria asked, knowing that the answer was probably no.

"I have to go now," Jane replied, in a fake voice. "My planet needs me."

A clever rejoinder was halted at Daria's lips when Jane unceremoniously floated into the sky and disappeared.

"...Anything to get out of studying, Jane..." Daria muttered in disbelief.

(Note: Jane died on the way back to her home planet).

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This ficlet was written for an Iron Chef posed by Roentgen on PPMB, in which it is posited that the voice actress for Jane (as well as Quinn and Helen, since they were all voiced by the same person) leaves the show, and the rest of the series has to truck on without her (and the characters). I responded to the challenge with a Simpsons joke. 


	3. Jake Plays the Ponies

Jake Morgendorffer was relaxing on the couch after a long, strenuous day at his consulting business. A martini in one hand, he took the occasional sip as he breathed slowly.

There was a knock at the door, which startled Jake's eyes open. He realized he had been halfway into a nap, and irritably marched toward the door (after setting the martini onto the table).

"Yeah?" he said in a surly tone as he opened the door. He instantly regretted it.

Two men stood in front of him. No, not men - mountains. Each man had at least a foot on Jake, and their bodies were almost as broad as a bull's. Jake was reminded a little of Mongo from Blazing Saddles, except Mongo didn't wear custom-tailored suits.

"Jacob Morgendorffer?" one of the men asked. He held a briefcase in one hand.

"Y-yeah?" he said nervously.

"Jacob, my associate and I heard that you like to play the ponies. Tell me, Jacob, is this true?" The man's associate cracked his knuckles. The sound was like a boulder being split in two to Jake's ears.

"Uh, listen, I can explain..."

Jake was cut off by the first man holding his hand up. "No need to explain, Jacob. My associate and I know all about how you can't get enough ponies. If we may come in..." The two men didn't wait for Jake to invite them in, walking in, Jake backstepping to avoid being knocked over and trampled.

XXXX

"That's strange," Quinn said aloud. She had just walked home from school, and noticed the front door was ajar. She would have to remember to remind Dad to shut it in the future - all sorts of bugs could get in! Quinn shivered at the thought, and walked into the house. The sight in the living room stopped her cold, her mouth frozen into an O-shape.

Her father was sitting on the floor with two strange men. Between Jake and one of the men was an open briefcase, filled with...

Quinn rubbed her eyes, to make sure she wasn't hallucinating.

Yes, they were in fact My Little Ponies.

Jake had one in his hands, meticulously combing its pink mane. "Pink ones are the best!" he said to the two men, who nodded in agreement. All three men had huge smiles on their faces. Jake suddenly noticed Quinn standing by the front door. "Hey, Quinn! Want to join us? We were just talking about which pony is the prettiest."

And that's when Quinn fainted dead away.

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Just a silly little ficlet in which it's implied Jake is about to get a beatdown from some angry bookie's thugs, except something quite different happens.

Interestingly, this was written in September '10, which I'm tempted to say happened before the whole My Little Pony mania swept the Internet. That's right, I was down with it before it was cool! :D 


	4. Daria Gets Clubbed

Daria backed away from Mr. O'Neill in a panic, noting the manic look in his eye and the sharp dagger in his hand.

"Why did you kill them, Mr. O'Neill?" she begged. "And why did you save me for last?"

The demented educator smiled. "My dear, it s that something special that makes people sparkle, and you have that!" Daria realized that she had been backed into a corner, and began weeping. "You have it in spades, and in clubs, and, and in diamonds, but above all..." Mr. O'Neill shoved the knife through Daria's ribs. "...You have it in your heart."

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Staticblast provided the line O'Neill said in an Iron Chef on PPMB, instructing people to use the line prominently in a story. I have a hunch he probably meant a cheerier story than this one. 


	5. Daria's Other Half

Panicked, Daria locked the door and, after a second's thought, pushed the couch in front of it. She looked around the room, and noticed the tape recorder on the doctor's desk was still going. She seized it and pounded on the Stop button; after hesitating, she rewound it to the beginning and pressed Play. She had to know what had happened.

"You are safe and warm in your secure cocoon. Just think of your favorite place." Dr. Millepieds' voice was one of the last things she remembered before her blackout.

"Anywhere but here," Daria's voice snarked from the recorder.

"You are safe and calm, feeling a warm, gentle breeze. Every bone in your body is relaxing. Easy...easy...At the count of ten, you will tell me everything you are feeling with no resistance..." As he counted down, Daria felt a growing sense of dread, like a viewer of a horror film felt when the buxom actress walked through the dark cabin wearing only a towel.

"Three...two...one. Daria, tell me what you are feeling."

"Daria? That's not right. My name is Melody." Daria's voice wasn't in her usual sullen, laid-back tone. It was harder...it had an edge to it.

"Melody? Tell me about yourself."

"I'm a deep cover operative with...wait, you should already know that. You're not my handler."

"Daria...Melody...what are you doing?"

"I'm sorry, whoever you are, but I can't have my cover compromised."

"Wait, Daria! WAIT! NOOO!" There was a loud snap from the tape recorder.

Daria looked down at the body of Dr. Millepieds, his neck at an unnatural angle.

"Daria, I want you to listen to me very carefully." Daria's head snapped back to the tape recorder in shock. "Unless you want things to become very complicated very soon, I need you to hide this body. I can't do it because I have only seconds before my conditioning returns and you take over again. If there's not enough room in one of those closets, you'll have to stuff him under his desk. Look for a bottle of cologne, or maybe spray-on deodorant, and empty the contents on him, so that nobody smells the body for a few days. After that, go back to your family and play dumb...well, about this poor bastard's body, anyway. We'll talk later, Daria. Oh, and take this tape. It'd be very foolish to leave it behind for the authorities."

Daria was numb, but she did as the stranger's voice on the tape (HER voice) commanded her to. She managed to jam Dr. Millepieds' body deep under his desk, sprinkled his body with a bottle of cologne she found in one of the drawers. As an afterthought, she wiped her fingerprints off the bottle, and every other surface she could remember touching. She shoved the couch out of the way, unlocked the door (wiping her prints off the handle), and closed the door behind her. She made her way to the nearest restroom and threw up, then returned to her family.

Two days after the family returned from the retreat, Dr. Millepieds' body was found. Nobody connected his death to Daria.

XXXXXXXXXX

Erin M. asked people in a PPMB Iron Chef to write what would happen if, in the Psycho Therapy episode, Dr. Millepieds had been successful in hypnotizing Daria. Inspired partly by the Christian Bale series My Own Worst Enemy, I decided to give Daria a split personality of sorts - her 'fictional' character Melody Powers, the super spy.

I keep re-visiting it every once in a while in my head, wanting to do more with it. Perhaps someday I will. 


	6. Daria Shrugged

"Hold on a second, Jane."

Jane and her new friend Daria were walking home after meeting at the after-school self esteem class run by Mr. O'Neill. They had just been discussing nocturnal emissions when Daria had spotted a toddler with a lollipop almost larger than her head, cheerfully standing on the sidewalk and taking the occasional lick.

Curiosity shifted into disbelief, then horror as Daria grabbed the confection out of the tot's hand and (after taking a lick for herself) shoving her to the ground.

The young girl landed safely on her butt. For three eternally-long seconds, she stared up at Daria with incredulity, who impassively gazed back down as she continued to lick the lollipop. Finally, she began to cry. Daria, considering her work done, went back across the street to rejoin Jane.

It took Jane a moment to finally speak. "What the HELL was that?" she shouted.

Daria looked at Jane as if she had just said one plus one equaled eleven. "I clearly deserved it more," she explained.

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This is based on an amusing interpretation of Objectivism I once read, which stated that Objectivism justified taking candy from babies, since they hadn't earned it and therefore didn't deserve it as much as the taker.

I wrote this for an Iron Chef on PPMB started by Raskolnikov, in which he suggests using Ayn Rand or her insane beliefs in a Daria fic. Charles RB's entry was objectively (ha ha) funnier; he has it posted in his own ficlets entry here on (a shame I don't remember what it's called0. 


	7. The Pen Is Mightier

Daria glared at Kevin as he shrugged, his sheepish grin the only apology she would ever receive.

She had spent all night writing her latest essay for English class, entitled "The Pen is Mightier than the Sword: Five Works of Literature that Sparked Wars", and had just placed it on her desk in anticipation of handing it in to Mr. O'Neill. Mack entered the class, followed by Kevin, who was goofing around with a bottle of water in one hand when he tripped over his shoelaces and splashed water on Daria, Daria's desk, and (most infuriatingly) Daria's essay.

Mack sighed. "Kevin, look what you did to Daria," he scolded.

Kevin offered up his apologetic smile once again. "Sor-ree!" he said.

Daria ignored him and began trying to dab at the cover page of the essay, but she only managed to smear the ink some more. She retreated to the ladies' room (ignoring the tardy bell) to fetch some paper towels to dry off with, and brought a few so she could make a more honest effort at drying her essay.

When she returned, however, the essay was absent from her desk, and Mr. O'Neill was in. "Daria! Welcome back! I took the liberty of collecting your essay in lieu of your presence. I hope you don't mind!"

"No. Not at all," Daria said through gritted teeth.

She seethed over the incident all class long. She shot occasional angry glances towards Kevin, who was oblivious to her looks and had probably forgotten he had wetted her essay in the first place.

Finally, class came to an end, and Daria approached the desk.

"Um, Mr. O'Neill? I wanted to apologize about my essay, and I wanted to know if I could reprint it and hand it in tomorrow."

Mr. O'Neill shook his head. "That won't be necessary, Daria. Your essay looks fine." Daria sagged in relief. "I did have a question about the title, though..." He placed the essay on the desk between them and tapped the title. "I've got to ask you about the Penis Mightier."

Daria stared blankly at Mr. O'Neill. "Uh...Mr. O'Neill, that's not the title of my essay. The title is -"

"Gussy it up however you want, Daria - what matters is, does it work? Will it really mighty my penis?"

"It's...not a product, Mr. O'Neill," Daria answered, mortified.

"Because I've ordered devices like that before - wasted a pretty penny, I don't mind telling you - and if the Penis Mightier really works, I'll order a dozen!"

"It's not a Penis Mightier, Mr. O'Neill. There's no such thing." She really didn't need to know that about Mr. O'Neill ever ever.

Mr. DeMartino poked his head into the classroom. "Is somebody selling PENIS MIGHTIERS?" he asked.

"No! No I'm not!" Daria insisted. She began to feel a pounding headache.

"Well, you're sitting on a gold mine, Daria!" Mr. O'Neill pointed out.

The tardy bell rang, which gave Daria the perfect excuse to flee from the classroom at top speed. She was going to kill Kevin for getting her into that situation.

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Based off of one of the classic 'Celebrity Jeopardy' SNL skits, naturally. 


	8. Jake's on a Plane

Daria and Jake Morgendorffer sat next to each other on the plane, lost in their thoughts.

"You know, the peanut really is a second-class nut," Jake observed of his snack. "Now cashews, those are what the big guys eat...the CEOs."

Daria reflected upon her own snack, and was about to comment on the weirdness of finding a salted goldfish cracker in her peanuts, when something else caught her ear.

"Is that...is that hissing? What's that coming from?"

Daria and Jake looked around and, to their horror, witnessed their fellow passengers quickly descend into chaos as various snakes wriggled their way into the cabin and began attacking people.

One particularly nasty-looking one reared its ugly head from the row of seats ahead of Daria and Jake, and made to strike Daria, before Jake quickly lashed out and flung it into the center row of seats.

As he took Daria's hand and rushed forward towards the dubious safety of first class, they saw a tall, bald, black man with a goatee staring increduously at the scene unfolding behind them.

"Not this shit again," Neville Flynn uttered.

XXXXXXXXXX

If you don't know what movie this is based off of, I pity you. 


	9. Happy Cat

Mad Dog sat at the head of the dinner table, watching his family as they looked back at him expectantly. Finally, he spoke.

"My brother is coming to visit for the next few days. He's arriving tonight."

"Your brother, honey?" Ruth asked. "Are you sure?"

"I didn't know you had a brother, daddy!" Jake said, face filled with curiosity.

"He's hardly a brother to me," Mad Dog muttered, almost too quietly for his family to hear. "But still, family is family."

After dinner, everybody put on their best clothes to greet Mad Dog's brother, and waited. Finally, after half an hour, there was a knock on the door. Mad Dog put on a scowl, walked over to the door and, after a moment, opened it.

A ball of yarn hit him squarely in the face. "Meow meow, brother!" came an effeminate voice.

"Hello, Lionel," Mad Dog growled out, face already turning red. Lionel lunged forward and embraced his brother in a hug. Were Jake and Ruth able to see Mad Dog's face, they would see a look of fury. Jake was surprised, however, as he had never seen anybody touch his father, let alone hug him.

"Now Mad Dog, you know very well how peculiar we are about our nicknames, hm?" Lionel said with a wink after pulling back. "Anyway, let me meet the fam." Mad Dog stood to the side so that Lionel could step in. He crouched and picked up the ball of yarn. "You're still on about this nonsense, then?" he asked rhetorically.

Jake approached Lionel and extended his hand, which his uncle shook. "So you're my uncle?" Jake asked meekly.

Lionel smiled widely and nodded. "Yep! You can call me Happy Cat, though. Meow meow!" Jake nervously smiled, but his uncle was seriously starting to freak him out.

And then Lionel began licking himself. Ruth rushed up and covered Jake's eyes, exclaiming "Oh my Lord!"

"Jesus," Mad Dog spat out, disgusted.

XXXXXXXXXX

It struck me, what if there was somebody the complete opposite of Mad Dog?

COMPLETE opposite. 


	10. Esteamsters

Esteamsters

or

What if the entire cast of Daria were steampipes?

XXXX

"Ssssssssssss," Jake said.

"Ssssssssssss," Daria replied.

"Ssssssssssss," Quinn said as she turned up the radio.

"Ssssssssssss," the musician on the radio sang.

"Ssssssssssss," Jake said as he pulled up to Lawndale High.

"Ssssssssssss," Quinn said as she hopped out of the car.

"Ssssssssssss," Daria said sardonically.

XXXXXXXXXX

I suppose another alternate title could be, "What would a Daria/Minecraft crossover look like?" 


	11. Itchy and Scratchy and Daria

Daria and Jane were walking to school, as was their wont.

"Did you study for your math test?" Jane asked, hoping to bum some notes off her amiga.

"I have to go now," Daria replied, in a fake voice. "My planet needs me."

The witty reply froze on Jane's lips as Daria unceremoniously floated into the sky and disappeared.

"...You know, I can't help but feel as if this is familiar somehow," Jane muttered to herself.

(Note: Daria died on the way back to her home planet).

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LSauchelli proposed an Iron Chef on PPMB in which Daria leaves the show mid-series run. I decided to recycle the Simpsons gag I used from the previous Jane/Quinn/Helen-less IC from Roentgen almost verbatim. Nobody noticed! 


	12. Really Big Love

Tom walked into Daria's room. "Daria, we need to talk."

She lifted her head to ask what was on his mind when she saw the used pregnancy test in his hand.

"You think that could be mine," she said. "And by mine, I mean ours."

Tom nodded.

"It's not." Tom slumped in relief, but a sense of unease was now within Daria. "Where did you find it?"

"It spilled out of the trash bag your mom asked me to take to the can outside."

"Oh." For once, Daria was at a loss for words. She and Tom hadn't bothered to take any precautions (so engorged with passion they were that night), and she had been worried about it for a week afterward, until her period arrived on schedule.

As she wondered who else in the house could be pregnant, Tom left the room. A moment later, she heard him speak from Quinn's room. "Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, and Tiffany? We need to talk."

"WHAT" Daria roared.

XXXX

Sometime later...

"WHAT" Daria, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, and Tiffany roared as Helen announced that she was going to be a mother again.

XXXX

Later still...

"Hey Daria," Jane said over the phone. "I kind of threw something important into the garbage while I was over there last. Could you put Jakey - I mean, your dad on the phone?"

"Goddamnit," Daria swore.

XXXX

Far, far later

"And so, by the authority vested in me by the state of Utah, I now pronounce you husband and wife, wife, wife, and wife." The minister smiled as Jake kissed Jane, Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany.

XXXX

Next door...

"...I now pronounce you husband and wife, wife, and wife."

Tom kissed an eager Quinn, an even more eager Helen, and a Daria who looked like she had just 'won' a lemon eating contest. "Damn false periods," she muttered.

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My sincerest apologies...this one just kind of ran away with me.

Vukodlak made a series of ICs in which the Morgendorffers (or those close to them) discovered a used pregnancy test in the garbage. This particular fic was written for Tom's reaction, and I went off the deep end and had Tom and Jake father, like, a billion kids each or something. 


	13. The Virgin Daria

Tom slammed the used pregnancy test down on the desk in front of Daria. "Is this yours?" he said, angry.

Daria looked from Tom, to the test, and back again. "Um. Maybe?" she squeaked.

"Was it positive or negative?" he asked, as if it mattered.

"Ummmm." Daria's reluctance to answer was all the answer Tom needed.

Tom glared daggers at Daria. "Daria, my loving girlfriend," he said contemptuously. "Do you care to explain how you became pregnant without the two of us having sex?"

Daria opened her mouth, but a great booming voice said, "I think I can answer that."

Suddenly, the ceiling of Daria's room rose up, as the entire ceiling of the Morgendorffer household was torn loose of the building. Standing there holding the roof was a man who had to be at least two hundred feet tall. His head was bald, but he had a great white flowing beard. He wore only a simple robe and, oh yeah, he was glowing radiantly. Cherubs floated about him, singing his praises in a neverending choir.

"Tom, I kissed Daria. I kissed your girlfriend. Oh yeah, and I also impregnated her with the second coming of Christ," God confessed.

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A second entry into the Tom's Trashfreak out IC proposed by Vukodlak. Hahaha, that poor Tom. 


	14. Daria and Jane Kick Each Other's Butts

Ms. Li looked from Daria to Jane, then closed her eyes and had a brief daydream about the full bottle of Scotch locked in one of her desk's drawers.

The two girls had met in Mr. O'Neill's self-esteem class, where they began disrupting class. Soon, the two were in an all-out brawl, and Mr. O'Neill was forced to order the two to Ms. Li's office.

Daria had a rather large bruise running up the left side of her jaw all the way to her chin. One of her glasses' lenses had been cracked. A hunk of hair had been torn from her scalp (and was, in fact, still clenched in Jane's fist). She held an ice-pack supplied by the school nurse to her stomach.

Jane had a rather impressive-looking black eye. The blood was only just beginning to taper off its flow from her nose; she kept needing new tissues to replace the old ones. One of her earrings had been torn from the lobe, leaving a disgusting-looking hole. She had had a limp walking into the office.

"Alright," Li started. "Talk."

The two girls were too busy glaring at each other to talk.

"TALK!" Ms. Li pounded her fist on her desk for emphasis.

Daria began. "She," saying the word with as much contempt as she could muster. "has a speech impediment."

"Ha!" Jane barked. "You're one to talk - or at least, make a poor effort at talking."

"What's this about a speech impediment?" Li asked.

"She says po-tay-toe," Daria said, snarling.

"And she says po-tah-toe," Jane snarled back.

"You say to-may-toe," Daria growled, leaning over the arm of her chair menacingly.

"And you say to-mah-toe," Jane accused, also leaning forward.

"PO-TAY-TOE!"

"PO-TAH-TOE!"

"TO-MAY-TOE!"

"TO-MAH-TOE!"

"BITCH!"

"CUNT!"

The two girls leapt from their chairs and wrapped their hands around each other's throats.

"CUT IT OUT!" Li roared, thumping her fist on the desk over and over until the girls had separated themselves. Fresh red marks were forming on their necks already. "Now, you two girls better call this whole thing off, or you'll be expelled as fast as I can sign the papers."

"How am I supposed to ignore this ignoramus and her stupid way of pronouncing po-tah-toe?" Daria asked.

"I don't know!" Li said, exasperated. "Figure something out! What do you two have in common?"

"I'm not even sure she's a member of the same species," Jane said, making a face.

"Look, just agree to not fight anymore, and I'll see what I can do to make sure you two don't have any shared classes. Will THAT work?" Li asked, hoping to get the two out of her office as soon as she could so she could crack open the bottle singing to her.

The two girls looked like they had just gone ten rounds in a lemon-eating contest, but finally nodded.

That's where Ms. Li made her mistake. "Good. Now shake hands."

Daria and Jane wearily extended hands until they grasped together and rocked up and down a few times. A shadow passed over Daria's face then, and she leapt from her chair, closing her other hand around Jane's so she couldn't pull away, lifted up her boot, and brought it down full-force on Jane's arm. Her upper arm stopped when it hit the armrest; her lower arm did not. There was a sickening SNAP! as the limb bent at an unnatural angle, one end of Jane's bone poking tearing through her skin.

"MY FUCKING ARM! YOU FUCKING BITCH!" Jane struck Daria in the mouth as hard as she could with her good arm, knocking the smaller woman down onto the floor. Daria spat out two teeth and tried to get up again, but Jane brought her foot down hard onto one of Daria's kneecaps. This time, there was a sickening CRUNCH! sound, causing Daria to scream incoherently and flail about. She managed to pull Jane down onto the floor with her mostly by luck, but Jane rolled on top of Daria, pinning her down. She grabbed her by the shoulders and began slamming her head against the carpeted floor.

Daria began to lose consciousness, but had enough cognition for one last attack. Seeing the small Buddha statue perched on Ms. Li's desk, she reached up for it, grasped it, and brought it down on Jane's head just as Jane slammed her own skull into the carpet particularly hard. Both girls were knocked unconscious at the same time.

Ms. Li stared at their prone forms for a good three minutes to make sure one wouldn't wake up and kill the other. After reassuring herself, she called an ambulance to pick them up and make sure there was no permanent damage. She filled out their expulsion forms as the paramedics carted them out. Finally, her responsibilities finished, she unlocked the cabinet, cracked the seal on the bottle, and chugged until half the contents were gone.

XXXX

"Again, let me extend Grove Hills' warmest welcome, Miss Morgendorffer," the dean of students at the elite gifted school beamed. "Normally, that bit of...unpleasantness...on your record would have barred you from entry to our institution, but your parents and former teachers assured me that the root cause of your...troubles...was not directly your fault."

"Thank you for the chance, dean," Daria said, grimacing at having to be polite. Helen had given her strict orders to be on her absolute best behavior after what had happened; Daria didn't intend for a repeat performance anyway, as she was utterly humiliated at how she lost her temper over such a trifling matter.

"As you've chosen to be a boarder student, allow me to show you to your dormitory," the dean smiled kindly. Daria hefted herself up on her crutches and followed the dean, who kept a slow enough pace for Daria to keep up. As they walked and hobbled together, the dean waxed on about Grove Hills' history, occasionally adding in personal anecdotes of his own time as a youth at the school.

Finally, they reached the dorms. "I know you had requested a single room, Daria, but we only grant those to the upperclassmen. I've hand-picked your dorm-mate, though - she's a sweet young woman, here on an artistic grant she just received a few weeks ago. I'm sure you two will be fast friends."

The dean opened the door for Daria, and she barely hobbled into the room before she saw the person reclining on the bed.

"YOU!" Daria and Jane shouted simultaneously.

As Daria hopped forward on her good leg, swinging her crutch wildly about, it occured to the dean that he should have read the girl's file more closely.

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Ms. Kinnikufan submitted an IC to the PPMB in which it is proposed that Daria and Jane become bitter enemies upon first meeting (instead of friends). I went with a wacky misunderstanding leading to an all-out brawl. I suppose if I cared to expand this into a full fic, they'd eventually hatesex it up. 


	15. Fashion Centipede Vignettes

Quinn's muffled screams of horror were cut off by Sandi. "Gee, Kuh-winn, if you don't like the taste of the salad I had last night, maybe YOU should be the head of the Fashion Centipede."

XXXX

Quinn looked behind her using the compact's mirror. Stacy had a shit-eating grin on her face.

XXXX

Daria looked at Jane's handiwork. "So you sewed Sandi to Tiffany...why?"

Jane gestured to the former Fashion Centipede, now Fashion Mobius Strip. "To solve world hunger!"

"Genius," Daria applauded.

XXXX

"Jane, I found a portal to unlimited parallel dimensions behind the Chinese restaurant downtown."

Jane was thoughtful. "What did you do with it?"

"I decided to start a parade..." She gestured outside.

Jane watched as Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy, Quinn, and Tiffany hobbled down the road in single file.

"My God..." Jane uttered.

"That's right, Jane. I created the Fashion Millipede."

XXXX

Daria looked from her father, down to Helen, Rita, and Amy, and back again.

"I decided to take a page from your book, kiddo!" Jake said proudly, holding the stitching needle up in one hand.

"Well, mom always did want to be closer to her sisters," Daria mused.

XXXX

Kevin looked at Daria and Jane expectantly, like a beloved puppy who's just killed the baby during a bit of play and thought it hadn't done any wrong.

The two girls gazed in dull horror at the writhing mass that Kevin had created with a lot of time and superglue. It was...roughly in the shape of a human, and it wore very pretty clothes (the Cashman's tags still hanging off most of them). A blonde wig topped it off.

"Well? Am I in the club?" Kevin asked, his fingers crossed.

Daria and Jane exchanged a look. He clearly misunderstood the purpose of the recently-formed Human Centipede Club, but they had to admit, he had a lot of heart.

Finally, Daria turned to Kevin and nodded. "Sure thing, Kevin. You'll be just behind Joey, Jeffy, and Jaleel."

"Aw, man..." He seemed a little discouraged at being lower in the ranks, but perked right back up. "Thanks for letting me in the club!" he enthused.

As Kevin walked off (before being felled by the dart from Daria's blowgun), Jane wondered aloud, "Where DID he get all those centipedes?"

XXXXXXXXXX

Charles RB submitted a rather demented Iron Chef to the PPMB: A mashup of Daria and the Human Centipede. I responded with a number of equally demented ficlets. I really should be locked up somewhere. 


	16. The Ghost Drawler

Tiffany gazed deeply into her reflection on the mirror. It's possible she was evaluating herself for any hint of imperfections...or, perhaps, it was just her obsession with shiny surfaces coming to the forefront again.

She suddenly noticed a man watching her from the corner of the bathroom and turned on him, a frown on her face. "You're not supposed to be in here," she scolded in her slow drawl. "This is the girls' bathroom."

The man looked shocked. "Wait, you can see me?"

"Unless this isn't the girls' bathroom..." Tiffany looked uncertain as she strained to remember if she'd entered the proper doorway.

"Are you telling me after three damn years, somebody FINALLY NOTICED TOMMY SHERMAN?" The man with the broken nose gave a whoop. "Dollface, I ain't never been so glad to talk up a chick like this before, you know what I mean?" The smirk on his face gave a strong hint as to what he meant.

Tiffany left the confines of her mind and noticed the ex-football player again. "If you don't get out, I'll tell," she said, pointing towards the door.

"Look, girly, you don't understand...all these geeks have been ignoring me for three years, and..." He had walked forward and tried to put an arm around Tiffany, but his arm refused to cooperate, sailing through her head like a ship through the mist.

The Fashion Clubber made a disgusted face. "Eww, that was creepy. What's up with you?"

"Look, I guess I died, alright? And since I'm a ghost or whatever, I got some unfinished business, I guess. And now you gotta help me." He would have tapped Tiffany on the chest for emphasis, but that would have brought a similar reaction that his arm had gone through.

Tiffany's eyebrows were furrowed in what passed for deep thought with her. "Hey," she said with realization. "You're Tommy Sherman. Aren't you...dead?" she asked.

Sherman sighed. "Oh great. Fantastic. The first chick to see me since I took a header, and she's a fuckin' moron."

Tiffany scowled. "That's not very nice," she said, before turning on her heel and leaving the bathroom.

"Hey, wait!" Tommy went after her.

XXXXXXXXXX

getrealordie187 suggested in a PPMB Iron Chef that two characters from Daria team up who would otherwise be unlikely to do so. I believe I dreamed up this combo during a bout of staying up all night. I really would like to expand this into a full-on fic someday. 


	17. Stinks Like Teen Spirit 2: Stinkageddon

Daria remained locked inside her room for the fifth straight day. She only darted out to steal a few snacks and a drink of water from the kitchen downstairs; otherwise, the smell was too horrible to remain out of her room for any period of time.

Her parents stank. Quinn stank. Everybody at school stank. JANE stank. She couldn't stand to be around a single one of them. She stank too, of course, but at least her own reek was tolerable.

There was suddenly a knocking at the door to her room, and she absently pulled her finger out of her nose and wiped it on the hem of her skirt. Opening it a crack, she saw two people wearing gas masks standing there. "Who are you?" she said suspiciously, pinching her nostrils together to keep out odors.

"Daria, you have to come help us!" one of them said. "Hygiene, Booger-Picking Shame, and Hold Your Farts In have escaped from Personal Responsibility Island!"

"...What. Who might you be, then?"

"Oh, I'm Don't Jump Into Traffic, and this is my friend Avoid Rabid Dogs. If you don't help us find Hygiene and the rest, human civilization will collapse from the weight of its own filth!"

Daria glared at the two beings with all the hate she could muster for a solid four seconds. "...Oh fine, if it'll mean everybody starts bathing again."

XXXXXXXXXX

Roentgen posted a thread to divest himself of a story idea: a Daria/Hetalia mashup, along the same lines as the Depth Takes a Holiday episode. After reading his post, I was inspired by the thought: if holidays can have aspects, and countries can have aspects, why not other things? So this filth came to be. I was almost tempted to say it took place in the same universe as Stinks Like Teen Spirit, but I didn't want to over-excite the denizens of the board, haha. 


	18. Oak Heaven

Tiffany walked down the hall, a confused look on her face. She had heard something unusual in the bathroom, and didn't know what to make of it. She soon noticed Quinn talking to a boy, and smiled, because Quinn might know what it was she had heard.

"Hey, Quinn," she said in her usual drawl. "Do you know what Oak Heaven is?"

Quinn made a face. "How am I supposed to know?"

"Well, you live with that brain..."

"Uh, no I don't!" Quinn said hastily, so as to not earn the disgust of the boy she was talking to (whatever his name was). "She, uh, lives in a tent in the backyard. And she's NOT a brain!"

"Oh...but what does Oak Heaven mean?"

Quinn sighed. She knew Tiffany - on the rare occasion something besides a shiny surface or her perceived fatness entered her thoughts, she couldn't think of anything else until the intruding idea had been destroyed. She still shuddered about the time Tiffany spent two whole Fashion Club meetings talking about her dog's worm problems. "Tell me where you heard Oak Heaven at. Was it part of a bigger sentence?"

Tiffany looked thoughtful for a long moment. "I heard it in the bathroom," she finally concluded. "And it was just Oak Heaven."

Quinn frowned. What a bizarre phrase. Now it'd bother her all day if she didn't figure out what it meant. "Maybe if we ask...somebody." By now, the boy had long since grown irritated of waiting and had walked off, but Quinn had already forgotten all about him.

"Like Sandi?" Tiffany suggested.

Quinn shook her head. "I don't think Sandi would know, Tiffany."

"What about that brain who lives at your house?"

"Tiffany, I TOLD you that...aw, forget it, let's go ask her."

They couldn't find Daria, but they did find Jane, Daria's friend.

"Fifty," Jane said as a way of introduction.

"WHAT? I haven't even said anything yet!" Quinn protested.

Jane nodded. "And now that you have, the price has gone up to seventy-five."

"Ooh!" Quinn fumed. "Just tell me where Daria is!"

Jane held out her hand. Grumbling, Quinn dug into her pockets and placed a $20 bill into it.

"That's all I have, I swear. Now tell me where Daria is!"

"I don't know."

"Ooooooh!" Quinn squealed. "Gimme that money back!" She tried snatching it out of Jane's grasp, but Jane was too quick, holding the wadded up cash out of Quinn's reach.

"Sorry, caveat emptor," Jane cautioned.

Quinn stopped struggling. "Hey, you know funny language stuff, don't you? Like that caviar guitar stuff?"

Jane gave a crooked smile and held her hand out. "Fifty."

"This is serious! Tiffany and I want to know what Oak Heaven means!"

"That's where trees go when they die," Jane explained. "You'll get my bill in the mail."

"That doesn't sound right," Quinn said. "Tiffany heard somebody say it in the bathroom, and it's going to bug her forever, and it's going to bug ME forever, and we need to know what it means or our HEADS will explode!"

"Ewwww, Tiffany said, making a disgusted face.

Jane stroked her chin. "Hmm..." Then Jane frowned. "Damnit, now you've got me curious! Let's see...maybe if we returned to the scene of the crime. Tiffany, take us to the bathroom where you heard Oak Heaven at."

"But I don't have to go anymore!" Tiffany pointed out. At the hard looks from Jane and Quinn, she finally relented.

Upon reaching the bathroom, it appeared deserted. "Hello?" Jane called out. Nobody replied. She inspected each stall, finding them all unlocked and empty. "Well, looks like nobody's home..." She trailed off as she cocked her head.

"...oak heaven...oak heaven..." a voice, sounding distant, echoed from the air vent in the ceiling.

"Of course! The roof!" Jane pointed dramatically towards the vent. "Somebody must be up there!" The trio, now on a desperate mission to solve the mystery of Oak Heaven, raced towards the roof access door and up the stairs, until they reached the roof.

"Oak Heaven! Oak Heaven!" The chanting was coming more quickly now, and the voice much clearer.

"Is that..." Jane said aloud, then shook her head. "This way!"

They ran around the side of one of the large air conditioning units and came to a dead stop. Before them, laying on a pile of discarded clothing, was Daria and...

"OH KEVIN! OH KEVIN!"

Jane and Quinn fainted dead away.

Tiffany stared for a few more moments. "Ohhhh, I get it now." Satisfied that the mystery had been solved, she stepped over the two unconscious bodies and returned to the school below.

XXXXXXXXXX

One day, I realized that 'Oh Kevin' sounded like 'Oak Heaven'. The rest fell in place magically. 


	19. It's All About R E S PE CT

Colonel Kyle Armalin looked out past the curtains at the audience, who had been chanting non-stop for ten minutes for the show to begin.

He turned to the students he taught for his special seminar at Lawndale High. "Okay, class, let's make this the BEST Arethra Franklin tribute concert EVER!"

XXXXXXXXXX

A parody of Brother Grimace's story "It's All About Respect", with an Aretha Franklin dusting. 


	20. Jake and the Fat Man

Daria's walk home from school was interrupted as she reached the driveway of her home and saw her father push the wheelbarrow out of the garage and towards the back of his SUV, inside which an ominous shape could be seen.

"Hey, kiddo! I was looking through some of my dad's papers this morning (lousy rotten old man)...and I found he had a storage locker here in town he had paid up for the next ten years. You'll never guess what I found inside!"

Daria sighed; her father getting entangled with anything to do with his father never led to anything good. "An unexploded nuclear bomb," she joked.

"Hey, that's right!"

"What?" Daria was alarmed to realize that Jake wasn't pulling her leg as he opened the SUV's rear hatch and the familiar design she had seen in history books revealed itself. Stenciled across the side was the phrase 'MARK III ATOMIC BOMB PROP. OF USAF'.

"I guess he somehow smuggled it home from his days in Korea," Jake speculated. "Want to help me unload it, kiddo? ...Daria?" While Jake had been admiring the WMD, Daria had turned tail and ran towards Jane's place, hoping she could reach the bomb shelter in the basement in time. "Huh. Oh well!"

Jake began to wrestle the nuke out of the back of the SUV; it had been a bitch and a half getting it in there in the first place, and it was even harder unloading it.

He managed to free the tail assembly, which allowed the bomb to roll freely out.

It landed squarely on Jake, pinning him to the driveway.

And something inside it CLICKED.

A look of horror crossed Jake's face, as he suddenly realized it was a very bad idea to cart around fifty year old nuclear weapons. "Oh FUC

XXXXXXXXXX

This story of Jake and antique weapons of mass destruction was inspired a tiny bit by the episode of the Simpsons where Sideshow Bob acquired a vintage nuke of his own and threatened Springfield with it.

Though it was mostly inspired by the pun of the title (which is lifted directly from an old court procedural TV series). 


	21. Historical Inaccuracies

"You know what William Tecumseh Sherman's going to do now? He's going to go out onto the battlefield and check out his new artillery piece. He's going to read the letter from President Lincoln and think of all the people who admire him. But you wouldn't know anything about that. You're one of those secessionist dudes, always moping about what a cruel country the United States is, making a big deal about it so people won't notice that you're a loser." With that, the Union general stormed out of the meeting with his Confederate counterparts, Generals William Barksdale and James Longstreet.

"I don't think he likes you," Longstreet commented to Barksdale.

"That doesn't bother me," Barksdale replied. "What bothers me is that jerk is going to be treated like a hero for the rest of his life."

"Well, maybe he won't live that long," Longstreet comforted.

"Come on. You know wishes don't come true."

Suddenly, there was a great roar from outside, and excited shouts and screams could be heard.

"Oh my God! The artillery piece misfired! General Sherman's dead! He's dead!"

Barksdale and Longstreet could do nothing but stare at each other, numb with shock.

XXXXXXXXXX

I was thinking of Tommy Sherman, and William Tecumseh Sherman, and I wondered if there were any appropriate stand-ins for Daria and Jane from the wealth of generals that participated in the Civil War. Five minutes' research on Wikipedia confirmed there were, so I jotted this out. 


	22. Apocalyptic Diarrhea

Daria walked up to the pharmacy counter. The clerk, whose nametag read 'Odell', smiled and asked, "What can I do for you, miss?"

"I've been constipated the past few days. Is there anything you can give me for that?"

Odell smiled. "I've got just the thing." He rummaged about behind the counter for a bit, then handed Daria a small bottle. "A mild laxative. The instructions are on the bottle." He rang her purchase up, thanked her for the patronage, and then watched out the window as she walked out of sight.

Pharmacist Odell Jones then smiled evilly, a cackle rising from his throat, as he thought of what would happen when the laxative hit Daria's system. For it was not mild laxative...but MEGA LAXATIVE.

XXXXXXXXXX

I was tempted to add one more paragraph, in which Odell hears an ominous rumbling, looks out the window, and sees a massive brown wave approaching, but that might have gotten me banned from the PPMB for being too revolting, haha.

Anyway, this is a parody of Doggieboy's Apocalyptic Daria series, which has a former priest (or some sort of church official) named Odell Jones as one of the main antagonists. My infinite apologies to him, and anybody who read this to boot. 


	23. Loose Fit 2: Loose Harder

"I don't ever want to see this stupid campground again!" Amelia railed. She was winding down from giving an impromptu speech at the fifth year reunion of her stay at Camp Grizzly, inspired partly by her so-called 'friend' Daria, and had seized the microphone from Skip 'Head Jerk' Stevens.

Skip, however, refused to stand up to anybody bad-mouthing the camp for long, and took the moment to seize the mic back. "You can't just get up here and rag on Camp Grizzly!" he scolded. "If you're not part of the team, go hang out with your loser, weirdo friend!"

Amelia seized the microphone back into her possession again, a possessed look on her face. "I don't want to be a part of your team, Skip. And I don't think anyone here really does." She pulled off her Camp Grizzly T-shirt, not noticing that the crowd suddenly got a lot more quiet. "So here's your Grizzly T-shirt back!"

She shoved it and the microphone into his hands, but they just...kind of...fell out. She realized he was staring at her. "Hey, what the hell are you looking at?" she asked, growing more irate.

It was at that moment she realized her critical mistake: It being an unseasonably warm spring day, she had ducked into one of the bathrooms, slipped off her regular shirt, and put on the camp one. And she hadn't been wearing a bra.

She immediately cupped her breasts, her skin turning tomato red as she ran off the stage. One cad in the audience shouted, "Nice tits!" before she was fully out of earshot.

Daria, sitting at a picnic table at the back of the crowd, just facepalmed.

XXXXXXXXXX

I wrote a story with a similar premise a long time ago, titled Loose Fit. Perhaps I should lump them together and start up a 'Wardrobe Malfunction Vignettes' thing. Haha. 


	24. Daria and the 'Rangers'

Daria stalked alone through the streets of Angel Grove. Ever since the sudden move to the new city without Jane, she had been bereft of companionship and, to her dismay, sank into depression. Sure, the town was a nice place to live - after all, giant monsters regularly demolished it. But with Jane around, it just wasn't the same thing.

Suddenly, and peculiarly, she saw a star fall from the sky. She had to rub her eyes to confirm there wasn't just an unusually-shaped piece of debris in them.

It was, in fact, a star, and not a meteorite or part of a satellite which burned up in re-entry. It wasn't the kind of star which was many times more massive than the Earth and experienced temperatures of the millions of degrees, either - it was just a five-pointed star, colored pink for some odd reason, large enough for its tip to come to just under her chin.

She looked around to see if anybody else was around, on the off chance that they had witnessed the star's arrival too, but no luck. Hesitantly, she reached out to touch the star...

And it vanished in a red blur.

"We got the STAR!" A voice above her said.

She looked up and, standing on the roof of one of the small businesses which lined the street, was a...person? Something wearing strange red armor. It carried an axe in one hand.

Four more of the weirdoes showed up, all in different-colored armor: pink, yellow, red and black.

"We're amazing!" Green shouted.

"We're unbeatable!" Yellow chimed in.

"We're gorgeous!" Pink shouted. Daria was reminded of Quinn.

"You better leave now, chump!" Black sneered at her.

"Chump?" Daria said, somehow offended.

The five vanished as quickly as they had appeared, along with the star.

"What the hell was that?" Daria asked aloud. Before she dismissed the rhetorical question from her mind, somebody grabbed her arm and LEAPT UP TO THE BUILDING TOP.

"Come on, we've got to stop them!" came the voice of the person who had grabbed her.

Daria looked over at him, and saw...that she was going crazy. Whatever it was was man-shaped, but made out of wood, and with the proportions of an action figure. It wore a blue tunic and pointed cap. Despite the fact that its face was mostly painted on, its expression moved organically, something which disquieted Daria to see.

"Look, they have a Star Piece, and we have to get it or else the Star Road will lay in ruin forever. Do you want that?"

Daria decided if she was going to be insane, she may as well dive in head-first. "No. No I do not."

The puppet-man smiled. "That's the spirit! By the way, my name is 3 o/~!, but you can call me Geno..."

XXXXXXXXXX

I decided to write this, since I'm a little jealous of all the Ranger-mania that's been sweeping the PPMB as of late; the reason is that I was actually a big fan of the Power Rangers back in the day, but I don't remember a damn thing about it except that Billy was my favorite Ranger (nerd unity!) and I think Bulk and Skull may have once had a potato in the shape of Elvis Presley's head, but that might have been another show entirely. So, not recalling any of the other characters, not to mention any of the monsters or plotlines or anything at all, I decided to cross over Daria with another set of Rangers. (In case you were a silly Sega fanboy (:P), the Axem Rangers and Geno are both from Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars). 


	25. Wait Listed

Daria reached one hand under her pillow to caress the two items nestled beneath it for what seemed like the hundredth time.

She had bought them a few days prior, in reaction to receiving her Bromwell 'wait-list' letter. The letter made out that the number of wait-listed applicants was rather long, and the basic gist was that Daria shouldn't keep her hopes up.

So, her first instinct had been to break it off with Tom, as she would be in Boston and he would be in Newtown, and...no. That would have been unacceptable.

Last weekend, on Friday, she had driven to a library three towns over and (after guessing the site admin's password) hacked into Bromwell's registration database and printed off the entire wait list.

On Saturday, she had gone to a town three towns over in the other direction and paid cash for a handgun at a gun show held in the conference room of a seedy little chain motel.

Now, for the hundred and first time, she fingered the sheet of paper and the cold steel of the firearm. Finally, she drifted off to sleep, and dreamt of winter in Newtown with Tom.

Because the best way to a man's heart was through the skulls of over a dozen preppies.

XXXX

I wondered what would happen if Daria were incredibly desperate to attend the same learning institution as Tom, and was also a complete psychopath.

I was going to arm Daria with a knife and have her go through the preppies' sternums (as that would be a more proper "man's heart" metaphor), but I thought it was unrealistic to have Daria engage in close quarters murder and get away with it so many times. Oh well! 


	26. World's Shortest Crossovers Collection

What follows are a collection of my contributions from various "World's Shortest Crossovers" threads on the PPMB, the intent being to cross over Daria with another property in as short a collection of lines as possible. This batch is from threads 1-3.

XXXXXXXXXX (See post-ficlet explanation)  
>XXXXXXXXXX<p>

For sale: Goal post, used once.

XXXXXXXXXX

That was a crossover with a story allegedly written by Ernest Hemingway in the exact same format, only replacing 'goal post' with 'baby shoes'. Pretty tragic stuff.

XXXXXXXXXX True Lies XXXXXXXXXX

"Fear is NOT an option," Daria hissed into Upchuck's ear, the object in her hand pressed under his chin.

Upchuck made a horrified face as the sound of his own urine splashing onto the embassy floor reached his ears; then, as soon as Daria withdrew, he ran through the crowd, screaming. Daria turned back to her husband Tom, smirking as she opened the tube of lipstick and applied a fresh coat.

XXXXXXXXXX Pirates of the Caribbean XXXXXXXXXX

"Parley?" Quinn Swann nervously asked.

XXXXXXXXXX Kill Bill XXXXXXXXXX

"My name is Buck Conroy, and I'm here to fuck."

XXXXXXXXXX (See post-ficlet explanation)  
>XXXXXXXXXX<p>

"Hi, Daria! I'm Khagendra Thapa Magar!"

XXXXXXXXXX

Mr. Magar was, at the time I wrote this particular ficlet, the shortest man in the world. As the thread title was World's Shortest Crossovers, it seemed a rather clever pun. (He's since been surpassed by somebody even shorter, I believe. I don't really care enough to update it. :\ )

XXXXXXXXXX Weekly World News XXXXXXXXXX

Daria shined her flashlight upon the huddled form in the cave. She checked the description given by her editor: Bald, pale skin, eyes larger than usual, pointed ears, and sharp teeth. All the characteristics matched up. "Jane!" she spoke into the radio. "I've found Bat Boy!"

XXXXXXXXXX Monster Squad XXXXXXXXXX

Daria and Jane stared wide-eyed at the werewolf they had just encountered in the creepy old mansion as it lay hunched over, clutching its groin.

"Wolfman's got nards," Jane said breathlessly.

XXXXXXXXXX Paul Bunyan XXXXXXXXXX

Daria and Jane were relaxing in Jane's room with the window open (it being a pleasant spring day outside). Suddenly, a very large bearded face appeared at the window.

"Has anybody seen my blue ox, Babe?" the man asked.

An irate look spawned on Daria's face. "Hey, bub, does this look like the World's Tallest Crossover thread to you?"

"Yeah," Jane added, equally harsh. "Beat it, Bunyan."

XXXXXXXXXX

Another pun-based entry, Paul Bunyan is shooed away because he's too tall for the 'Shortest' crossover thread.

XXXXXXXXXX WALL-E XXXXXXXXXX

"Name?" the orange-colored robot asked the diminuitive boxy one.

"JANE-E!" it replied. After considering the situation for a minute, it extended a grabber, one 'finger' extended, and repeated the question it had been asked.

The orange robot glowed a little and seemed to growl out, "PhEIS-T!"

XXXXXXXXXX

I actualy went to the bother to make their names real, coherent acronyms like in the film - 'Junk Allocation and Neutralization Expeditor, Earth Class' and 'Photosynthesis on Earth Investigatory Scout, Titan Class'.

XXXXXXXXXX Demolition Man XXXXXXXXXX

"Daria Morgendorffer, you've been fined one credit for your violation of the Verbal Morality statute," the banal computer voice announced.

XXXX

"She doesn't know how to use the three seashells!" Tad Gupty snickered.

XXXX

"That's who you remind me of!" Mack realized as he talked to Ms. Li. "An evil Mr. Rogers!"

XXXX

"I want to run through the streets naked with green Jell-o all over my body reading Playboy magazine!" Upchuck ranted.

XXXX

"I was wondering if you would like to have sex?" Jane asked casually.

Daria was flabbergasted. "Here? With you? Now?"

XXXXXXXXXX

It was hard to stop at just five of these. The movie's so damn quotable, I could have ended up just doing the whole damn thing.

XXXXXXXXXX Magic School Bus XXXXXXXXXX

"Where's the Frizz?" Carlos asked. "Is she sick or somethin'?"

"Yes...or something..." Ms. Barch replied, pointedly ignoring the muffled banging from the closet. "Anyway, class, I'll be your substitute teacher today. We'll be exploring the male reproductive organ..."

"Please don't let this be a field trip!" Arnold begged aloud.

"To the bus!" Barch announced, with two large boxes under her arms. "It's time to take chances, make mistakes, and dump thermite into my ex-husband's testes!"

"At my old school, we never incinerated the genitals of our teachers' ex-husbands," Phoebe pointed out.

XXXXXXXXXX Lost Boys XXXXXXXXXX

"How are those maggots?" Val as in Val asked.

"Huh?" Daria asked, perplexed.

"Maggots, girlfriend," she explained with a smirk. "You're eating maggots. How do they taste?"

Daria looked down into the Chinese food carton and saw that the 'rice' was, in fact, dozens of squirming maggots. Revolted, she threw the carton on the floor...where it was once again rice. The laughs of the other girls reverberated throughout the ruined hotel.

XXXXXXXXXX Oregon Trail XXXXXXXXXX

Daria shakily lowered the rifle after expending the last of her rounds. She had been afflicted with the same dystentery that had killed Quinn just a few months prior, and as her father had drowned trying to ford the river last week and her mother had sustained a broken leg while hunting the day before, so it was up to her to put food in their mouths.

She shivered from her illness as she cut chunks of meat from the buffalo, and reflected what a shame it was that she'd only be able to make a few trips back to the wagon (a few hundred pounds of meat total) before darkness fell, and the remaining meat would rot overnight. She shrugged and made her way back to the wagon for the first trip.

She didn't even look at the other twelve buffalo she had shot and killed.

XXXXXXXXXX

Admit it, you all did this in elementary school (unless you didn't have computers).

XXXXXXXXXX Third Rock From the Sun XXXXXXXXXX

The Morgendorffers were having a quiet family dinner when Quinn shot up, arms straight up, and shouted, "INCOMING MESSAGE FROM THE BIG GIANT HEAD!"

XXXXXXXXXX

Shamefully, Jim North pointed out to me that somebody already did a Third Rock From the Sun crossover earlier in the thread, with Quinn in the exact same role.

XXXXXXXXXX Men in Black XXXXXXXXXX

"We're gonna check the hot sheets," Agent D said. She picked up the remote and flicked it to Sick, Sad World.

"This is the hot sheets?" Agent J asked skeptically.

"Best investigative reporting on the planet," Agent D confirmed. 


	27. Trennt and Odell's Excellent Adventure

"Your lawyer's here, Lane," the guard told Trennt. Trennt shot a sullen glare towards the guard, but got up wordlessly and followed him.

He sat down in front of the glass divider and picked up the phone. "Okay, what's the game? You ain't my lawyer."

The goateed man leaned forward. "Trennt, have you ever read Apocalyptic Daria?"

Trennt's face broke out in a wide grin. "So, you're Odell Jones, come from a parallel universe to bust me out of prison. You're like a personal hero of mine."

Odell nodded and smiled in return. "I'm not just from a parallel universe, Trennt. I'm from an Evil Parallel Universe."

"Ohoho, this just keeps getting better and better. So when do we leave?"

Odell put his hand up on the glass divider. "Now, if you want."

Trennt put his hand up to match Odell's, and there was a bright flash of light. When his vision cleared, he saw that he and Odell were standing in the middle of a poorly-lit warehouse. It was empty.

"Where are we?" Trennt asked, looking around.

"Oh, this is where you're going to die, Trennt."

Trennt whirled back to Odell. "What?"

Odell smirked. "Trennt, you fool. Don't you know the rules about Evil Parallel Universes?"

Trennt nodded, scowling. "Yeah, the first one is that everybody has a goatee."

"Yes, yes." Odell stroked his goatee. "And do you know the second rule?" Trennt shook his head. "If everybody good turns evil in an Evil Parallel Universe...then everybody evil, by process of elimination, turns good." He whistled, and a number of large hungry dogs stepped out from the darkest corner of the warehouse. "I hope you can run fast, Trennt." And with that, Evil Good Odell Jones (known as 'Pasta Shell Odell' for the food he served all the evil bums at the homeless shelter) walked off as Trennt began his new life as kibble.

XXXXXXXXXX

A ficlet I wrote for the 'Take Out Trent Lane' IC on the PPMB. Odell Jones is from Doggieboy's story Apocalyptic Daria, as noted by Trennt, that fourth wall-breaking hooligan. 


	28. Cafe Disaffecto: The Alternate Ending

Onstage, Jake, Helen, Daria and Quinn threw up their filth-encrusted arms and shouted "The Aristocrats!"

Well, Jake, Helen, and Daria shouted. Quinn just sort of mumbled, due to her dislocated jaw. 


	29. Seoul Man

"The polls have yet to close, but I believe it's close enough to call now...Tom Sloane has been elected president of South Korea!"

XXXX

From a PPMB IC, 'Tom has a Soul'. People were filling the thread with wacky puns based on the word soul, or homonyms of it, and I decided to throw one into the ring as well. 


	30. Ms Li's Magic DNA Computer

Ms. Li smiled as the student/teacher genetic database gave a *ping!* sound, indicating it had found a match. "Good, good," Ms. Li cooed, rubbing the palms of her hands together. "Now to see who the guilty parties are!" She examined the printout. "The mother is...Jane Lane! Aha! I finally have you! And the father is...this can't be right. It says the father is a genetic match with Daria Morgendorffer. Ah, this damned machine..."

XXXXXXXXXX

Eh, let's pretend that Ms. Li has some magic technology that can actually do that.

This is from a PPMB IC proposed by Vukodlak, in which Ms. Li finds a used pregnancy test and tracks down the culprit in order to mete out justice, Lawndale-style. 


	31. Darkwing Dariuck

"Jane, I kissed your boyfriend. I kissed Tom. And also I'm a crime-fighting vigilante. And a duck."

XXXX

Charles RB suggested an Iron Chef in which Daria was secretly Darkwing Duck. This was the first thing to come to mind. 


	32. Ill: The Alternate Ending

Helen looked at Daria as she lay in the oxygen tent, naked as the day she was born. Ugly, painful-looking red blotches covered her entire body, and a plastic tube was inserted down her throat to help her breathe. The bed had no standard sheets; they had been replaced with plastic or vinyl ones. Various machines recorded her vital signs - Helen wasn't familiar with most of them, but she knew that the ECG was showing her that her daughter's heart rate was dangerously low. She wished she could help her daughter, but she couldn't even go near her for fear of aggravating her condition again.

"I just don't understand, Dr. Phillips. How could this have happened to her?"

Dr. Phillips shook his head. "It's not unheard of for people to become allergic to certain stimuli that they could tolerate earlier in life, Mrs. Morgendorffer, but as to how she suddenly became allergic to every known natural and synthetic fiber...I'm at an utter loss."

"Will she ever be able to wear any clothing again?"

The doctor sighed. "At this point, Mrs. Morgendorffer, we should be more worried about whether or not she lives through the night." He clapped a hand of sympathy on her shoulder before walking out of her room, leaving her to stand vigil over her daughter with the beeping machines and hissing ventilators.

XXXXXXXXXX

Erin M. proposed an IC on PPMB entitled 'Everybody Loves a Naked Daria', in which Daria ends up naked for some non-sexual reason. I believe it was meant to be a light-hearted IC, but because I'm a horrible monster, I wrote this. 


	33. It's Not a Tumor

Daria looked at the pregnancy test balancing on top of the pile of debris that had spilled out of the no-rips-my-ass trash bag. Everyone else was looking at it too.

She looked up at Helen, whose face was as surprised as hers. After a brief shake of the head, Helen returned the gesture, and both of them lasered in on Quinn.

"Why are you all looking at ME?" Quinn demanded. "You know my dating rules, and nobody in THIS town is rich enough to even get some over the clothes action!"

"TMI, Quinn," Daria sighed, then turned to Jane.

Jane put her hands up to ward off any questions. "Don't look at me, amiga. Tom and I never did...uh, anything that would result in pregnancy." She began to blush.

They all looked back to the pregnancy test. "Then whose test is it?" Helen asked aloud.

Daria realized that, for some reason, her father hadn't seen fit to comment on the situation. She turned to him, and he was looking very nervous. "Dad, is there something you want to share with the rest of us?"

He desperately looked around for an escape, but was blocked on all sides. Finally, resigned, he said, "Kiddo, you know that one movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in it?"

Daria blinked. "Dad, I really hope you're about to tell me that you're a robot from the future."

XXXXXXXXXX

Written for Vukodlak's Trash Freak-out Free For All IC - similar to his other Trash Freak-out ICs, except the test is revealed to everybody simultaneously. 


	34. Illogic and Inexperience

Daria's logic told her that gravity worked one way (down), and that was that.

Daria's experience told her that it had always been this way, from long before her birth to well past her death in the future.

So imagine her surprise when one day, upon stepping outside her front door, she promptly began to fall up, screaming and screaming until the air grew too thin for that, until finally she reached the vacuum of space and promptly burst like an overripe tomato striking a terrible actor.

XXXXXXXXXX

From an IC proposed by DIsaac, in which he took the line from Is It College Yet, "Otherwise, my advice is: stand firm for what you believe in, until and unless logic and experience prove you wrong..." and challenged people to come up with a scenario in which both Daria's logic and experience were proven wrong. Naturally, I went with silly. 


	35. Fun and Games

Jane was walking her new friend Daria home when her brother's car pulled up alongside them. She froze with panic.

"Hey, Janey," he said with a lazy smile. "Who's your new friend?"

Jane gulped. Why had she decided to walk Daria to her home? She could just as easily have waited at the office to be picked up by one of her parents. "Um. This is Daria, Trent. She's...mentally disabled." She prayed the information would dissuade him somehow.

Trent chuckled at this, which turned into a cough soon enough. "Mentally challenged, huh?" He shifted his view to Daria. "Hey, Daria, I'm going to take Janey home, where some guys I know are gonna play a fun game with her. Do you wanna play?"

Jane was shaking her head no furiously at Daria, but Daria ignored her. "I like games," she said quietly.

Trent smiled then, a wolf's smile. "So do I, sweetheart, so do I."

XXXXXXXXXX

This was inspired by Charles RB's 'In Any Other World'. And in case you don't quite get the horrific implications, that was MBF Trent.

I'm going to hell. 


	36. Friendship is Tragic

Jane smiled as she reached the main building of the secluded ranch where Daria was doing her research on horse pathology. She had worried about Daria for some time now, ever since she was booted from her internship and medical school at the same time. In her depression, she had taken to watching increasingly large amounts of children's television programming - especially the new My Little Pony show. However, nine months ago, she had snapped out of her funk and used her previous experience in medicine and her current interest in...ponies...to fast-track her way into a veterinarian internship. She had done so well, the university had given her a small ranch to oversee by herself, where she could treat horses on her own (and an advisor was only a phone call and a half hour away if she ran into something she couldn't handle).

Daria was waiting for Jane as she got out of the car, and the two briefly hugged. "Jane, I'm glad you could make it," Daria said, her voice more animated than Jane could ever remember. "I've been doing some fantastic work with the horses here, and I want you to be a part of it."

Jane's eyebrows rose up. "A part of it? Me? Daria, the most I know about horses is that Catherine the Great was killed by one. I don't think I'll be much help to you."

Daria chuckled at Jane's statement. "Oh, don't worry, Jane, you'll see."

They walked to the stables and chatted about the minutiae that had filled their lives since the last time they had talked. When they entered the stables, Daria would stop at each stall and tell Jane a little about the horse within.

At one stall, Jane stopped and gasped. "Is that a...a..."

"A unicorn?" Daria finished, looking to the animal which lay on the ground, its breathing labored. She shook her head, a somber look on her face. "This poor creature was exposed to a chemical in utero which causes horrific bone deformations...as a side effect, it does cause a single horn-like protrusion that causes it to resemble the mythical unicorn, but it will never be able to stand or walk on its own. I've attempted numerous surgeries to see if I can restore any of its functions, but..." Daria sighed. "I think I may have to put it down."

The rest of the walk through the stables was a quiet affair, with Daria giving terse descriptions of the rest of the horses they passed by. After leaving the stable, Daria seemed to cheer up a bit, and Jane decided to cheer up to. She turned to Jane and said, "Okay, now I want to show you what I've been working on most." She actually grabbed Jane's hand and pulled her along, like a little kid eager for their parent to see something they were especially proud of.

In the main building, there was an area for operating on horses, and Jane saw that there were actually two horses within, separated by wheeled dividers. The first was laying on the ground and was still, apart from its breathing. The second was standing and conscious, though its eyes looked glazed-over and what appeared to be numerous surgical scars covered its head and neck.

Daria led Jane to unconscious horse first. "Jane, you're going to help me with the surgery I'm going to perform on this horse."

Jane's eyes practically bugged out of her head. "Uh, Daria? I don't know if you think I just forgot to mention it, but I haven't gotten a degree in veterinary medicine, horse surgery, or anything like that since we last saw each other. What about that guy who's supposed to advise you on stuff like this?"

Daria smiled, and Jane started to feel uneasy. "Oh, I don't need his help with this. Besides, he died."

"Oh. Damn. I'm sorry -"

Daria continued on as if Jane hadn't spoken. "And I don't need you to help with the 'cutting open' part anyway. Here, let me explain." She led Jane to the second horse. "This is the result of the second time I've tried the surgery, and she came out wonderfully. She's alive, all her organs are functioning (as long as I give her her meds every day), she even has total control of her limbs."

Jane began to feel scared. Just a little bit, since Daria was her oldest and most trusted friend, but...a little bit. "Daria, I still don't get what you're talking about."

Daria smiled and turned to the horse. "Quinn, why don't you tell Jane?"

Jane was about to ask why she named the horse after her sister when it turned to her and...

"...kill...meeeee..." the horror rasped out.

Jane saw that Daria had painted or tattooed a bright yellow smiley face on its rump. "Oh my God," Jane gurgled out.

"Do you see why I need you now, Jane? My advisor died halfway through the procedure the first time, and I need to have done it at least two times to make sure I've got the surgery down pat. Then I can tell the whole world that My Little Ponies are real!"

Jane tried hard to listen to what the insane stranger was telling her, but instead she decided a much better idea would be to get the hell out of Dodge and call in absolutely every fucking body, from the army all the way down.

She almost made it out of the room when her shoulder exploded in pain, causing her to stumble and trip, laying halfway out the doorway. Daria walked up casually as Jane laid there, setting the dart gun down out of Jane's reach and removing the expended dart from Jane's shoulder. As she began to drift out of consciousness, the last thing to enter her brain was Daria's voice.

"Jane, I was wondering if you've given any thought as to what you want your cutie mark to be." 


	37. What Dreams Are Made Of

Daria was laying on Jane's bed as Jane painted. Suddenly, Jane spoke.

"I'm thinking of doing a live-action interpretation of Dream of the Fisherman's Wife."

Daria promptly stood up and walked out of the fanfic.

XXXXXXXXXX

Tafka proposed an IC in which octopi are utilized in some way. My mind immediately went into the gutter. 


	38. Esteemsters From 50,000 BC

"Girls, me want you know me and Helen know it not easy moving to whole new town in future after big freeze for many year - even for you, Daria, right?"

Daria grunted before responding. "We move? Look like cave, only smell funny."

Jake laughed. "Me just say you no make friends easy as...uh, some people."

Quinn squinched up her face and poked a random button on the console. Music poured into the car, inciting the three Neanderthals inside to begin screaming in terror. "ME NO LIKE! ME NO LIKE!" Jake screamed over and over again.

Finally, the car lurched up over the curb and the three refugees from the Paleolithic era leapt out, screaming, and scattered off into the distance.

Sandi and Stacy looked on. "It's going to be one of THOSE years," Sandi sighed.

XXXXXXXXXX

Regrettably, the fractured English would get old after a while, and besides that, a few Geico jokes, and the TECHNOLOGY IS SCARY gag, I couldn't see doing much more of this. Oh well. 


	39. Purity Test

Daria and Jane arrived at school from their standard walking route to find the student body clustered around some spectacle in front of the building. "What's going on?" Jane wondered aloud.

"I'd tell you, but all the other kids told me not to say when they called me up last night," Daria deadpanned.

As they grew closer to the crowd, they could hear, over the general chatter of their peers, the occasional bout of laughter and cheering and, once, a whinny. They saw QUinn, who was on the periphery of the crowd, who spotted them and lit up with a devious smile.

"All right, Quinn, what do you want?" Daria sighed.

"Come on, Daria, I want you to see this!"

Daria and Jane shared a look as Quinn uncharacteristically grabbed Daria's arm and dragged her into the midst of the crowd. Jane followed along, having barely grabbed Daria's hand before Quinn put on the rocket boosts.

Once at the center of the crowd, Daria and Jane saw what the student body had been fawning over, and both of them (even Daria) were a little impressed.

For at the center of the crowd stood a majestic unicorn, ivory white from the tip of its horn to its tail, and even its hooves. As they watched, Sandi Griffin walked up to it and placed one hand on its haunch. The unicorn did not react.

As she walked back to the other fashion groupies, smirking, Daria turned to Quinn. "Okay, the unicorn is...interesting, but why is everybody touching it?"

Quinn rolled her eyes. "DUH, Daria! Everybody knows that a unicorn knows how pure you are. If you've been...less than virginal, then your touch hurts it."

"I guess it doesn't react if you're an asshole," Daria pointed out, referring to Sandi.

Tiffany walked up to the unicorn next, stood up on her tip-toes, and rubbed its horn. "Shiny..." she commented. The unicorn whinnied and shied away from the touch. The jeers from the student body washed over the Asian girl ineffectually, as she returned to Sandi and Stacy.

"Daria, you have to try it," Quinn urged her sister.

"You first."

Quinn waved a hand in dismissal. "I already took a turn before you got here. I'm sure, uh, Jane, would like to see what happens."

Daria shot her I'll-kill-you-with-my-mind eyes at Jane, but her best 'friend' had a huge grin on her face. "You know, Daria, Quinn has a point. Go touch the unicorn."

Daria finally sighed. "Fine, if it'll get you two idiots to shut up."

Daria walked up to the unicorn, as everyone else looked on.

She didn't get a chance to touch it, as when she was within a foot of it, it BURST INTO FLAMES. The animal let out a strangled scream before collapsing, the entire beast being reduced to a charred skeleton in seconds.

Daria gazed at her fellow Lawndalians, who were uniformly staring at her in horror. "What?" she asked. She stepped over the cremains and walked into the building, the other students giving her as wide a berth as possible.

The last thing she heard before entering the building was a shout of "Feisty!" 


	40. Tom's Lucky Dime

Amelia walked up to the prone, bloody form of Tom Sloane and easily plucked the lucky dime from its resting place in his back pocket. It had been simple to kill him: all she had to do was enchant the money in his money bin to obey real-life physics instead of cartoon physics, so the very next time Tom attempted to dive into it head-first, he cracked his skull open and shattered his spine.

She went on to use the lucky dime to finish her evil spell to take over the world or something.

XXXXXXXXXX

Charles RB posted an IC which noted that Magica de Spell, the evil witch character from Duck Tales, is called Witch Amelia in several nations (mainly Italy and Chile), and challenged people to write a fic about her stealing the lucky dime from any rich character on the show. Thus, this drivel was born. 


	41. Cleveland Esteemsters

"Well, girls, here we are on our first day in Ohio!" Jake cheerfully said to his daughters as they drove to school.

"You do know what this town is famous for, right, Dad?" Daria asked.

XXXX

Twenty seconds later, the car made an unscheduled U-turn and proceeded to violate the speeding laws of both the state of Ohio and the laws of physics as Jake fled the city, screaming "EWWWWW!" at the top of his lungs.

XXXXXXXXXX

It doesn't matter that I'm a few thousand words behind on my novel. The title popped into my head and I HAD to do something with it. 


	42. Dye! Dye! My Mutated Abomination

"Ta-da!" Jane stated with a flourish as she forwarded the manipulated photograph to Daria and Tom over neurolink wifi.

Daria examined the picture as thousands of nanobots projected it directly onto her retina. It was Jane, but her black hair had streaks of yellow in it. Her eyes also looked funny.

"Um, very nice," Daria said of it. "Or is it a cry for help?"

"I'd have to go with...both," Tom concluded.

"Don't you get it? The lady or the tiger - now you don't have to choose?"

"What's a tiger?" Tom asked, clueless.

"A species of big cat. They went extinct centuries ago during the climate crisis of the late 21st,"

"This is going to be my new look," Jane said, brushing aside their digression. "And you're assisting in the procedure," she said, a pointed look at Daria.

XXXX

Daria and Jane were browsing through the index of an amateur genetic archivist's website, Jane growing increasingly irate with the vast amount of options available. "Sabertooth Tiger, Orangutang, Dodo...I just want to alter the fundamental structure of my DNA, not start a freaking farm!"

"None of those animals were ever used for farming," Daria pointed out. "Jane, you know i have no aptitude for this sort of thing. Synthesizing DNA strands from long-dead species, engineering a retrovirus to infect you with that DNA..."

"Look, Daria, this is the kind of activity that teen girls do together to cement their friendships. Don't you want to cement our friendship?"

"I'm pretty sure Quinn and her fashion buddies never tried to violate the laws of God and man."

"Ah ah ah, Daria, the Vatican decided that the soul did not reside in the DNA, so God is totally down with this. Come on, why don't you want to help me, really?"

"I just told you, I'm afraid I'll screw it up."

"Hokay...you're worried about making me look bad."

"What's the matter with you?" Jane was acting weird(er than usual), which had Daria concerned.

"Nothing's the matter with me. Just grateful for your concern, that's all."

XXXX

Daria examined the box which contained the black market copy of 'Homemade DIY Gengineering!'. A smiling cartoon strand of DNA adorned the box, reminding her of a character from some ancient dinosaur movie made in the days well before AI actors and full 5Sense integration had transformed cinema into fully interactive plays that could last for weeks. "Why couldn't we just get a store-bought gengineering suite?" she asked Jane.

"Because that stuff's just for housewives who want bigger boobs. No flexibility for introducing different species' DNA into your own."

Daria simply tapped the cartoon DNA strand on the box.

"Look, I know it looks kiddy, but this version is supposed to be hacked to give you God-level access to your DNA, which is just what we need. Come on, Daria, we have nothing to fear but fear itself."

"What about that time our neurolinks picked up a netvirus and our brains were overloaded with painful hallucinations for days?"

"Well, okay, that and fear."

XXXX

Daria was watching a historical pornumentary on the life of an American founding father when the inhuman screams reached her ears. She had left Jane to 'cook' in the bathtub, which had been repurposed as a temporary gengineering pod for their purposes.

When she reached the door to the bathroom, she recoiled at the monstrosity that pulled itself out of the goop in the bathtub. Patches of orange fur were sprouting out of its skin like wildfire. It took its hands - fingers gnarled horribly with claws haphazardly jutting out the ends of some of them - and tore out the sections of fur, screaming angrily and in pain with each one.

Upon spotting Daria staring aghast in the doorway, it snarled. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO MEEEEEE? WHAT DID YOU DO TO MEEEEEEE?" It began crawling slowly towards Daria, pure hate affixed in its one good eye. "BETRAYER!" it screamed out. "YOU STEAL TOM!" As the gengineering worked its awful magic, the brain of what used to be Jane Lane was clearly headed down the opposite end of the evolutionary path, along with the rest of her body.

"No, I...no..." Daria was speechless. There had been some veiled (and not-so-veiled) accusations of such while Daria prepped the retrovirus, but she had firmly denied the accusations. Now, though...

She bent over and vomited. Wiping her mouth off, she was just in time to dart her head back before the Janestrosity could claw it off with a single swipe. She ran downstairs, grabbed the flamethrower stationed in the kitchen ("Thank God for the Zombie Destruction Act," she muttered to herself), ran back upstairs, and filled the bathroom with fire.

Crying, she discarded the flamethrower as Jane's death-rattle was broadcast directly into her neurolink, just before the heat rendered it inoperable, cutting off the transmission. 


	43. A Song About a Quail

"...and I've been her distant cousin ever since," Daria finished explaining.

"So this is where it all began," Jane noted.

"It wasn't all unpleasant memories, though!" Daria's face suddenly had a huge, out-of-character grin on it as she spotted another camp alumni who was drawing near. "AMELIA!" she cried out.

"DARIA!" Amelia returned. The two embraced warmly.

"Hmm. Daria having a secret fan club is pretty -"

Jane was cut off as Daria and Amelia began singing in unison.

"HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY, HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY..." To Jane and Trent's shock, the two actually began slamming their asses together in some incredibly weird dance that apparently went along with the song.

The Lane siblings slowly backed away from the spectacle until they reached the van, at which point in time they piled in, in hopes of escaping whatever Daria had (if it was contagious). The Tank burned rubber peeling out of the Camp Grizzly parking lot.

"...HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY JOOOOOY!" Daria and Amelia began laughing heartily upon finishing the song, leaning on each other for support. "Jane, I want you to meet...huh, where did she go?" Daria shrugged. "Oh well. Let's go bug Skip!" Arm-in-arm, the only two Ren and Stimpy addicts for a hundred miles set off to have the wildest camp reunion they could. 


	44. On Portmanteaus

Jane was browsing the latest offerings of fan fiction while Daria read a book on the bed behind her. "Hey, amiga, ever notice how our fandom isn't saddled with those weird mishmash name things?" she asked out of the blue.

"Weird mishmash name things?" Daria asked.

"Yeah, like how when Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck were dating, the tabloids all called it Bennifer. A lot of other fandoms do it, but ours doesn't."

"That's called a portmanteau. And besides, a lot of other fandoms don't have as many weirdoes as ours does," Daria pointed out.

"True, true." Jane was silent for a few minutes, and Daria hoped (and prayed) the matter was dropped.

"What if our fandom DID have those portman-thingies?" Jane asked.

Daria sighed and squeezed her eyes shut. "It would be exquisitely bad."

"Oh come on...Taria." Jane's tone was teasing.

"Taria?"

"You know, for Trent and Daria." Jane winked.

"You're a veritable Kane," Daria said, nailing Jane with a Biblical reference that sailed right over her head.

"Kane?"

"Kevin/Jane."

"Oh you BITCH!" Jane leapt across the room, yanked the pillow out from under Daria's head, and began whaling on her friend. Daria seized the other pillow, and the battle was on.

"Dareavis!" Jane shouted as she deflected an attempt on her arm.

"Jane-Head!" Daria shot back, as she landed a solid blow to the side of Jane's head.

"Upcharia!"

"Janehanssen!"

"Dariane..." came a whisper from outside.

Daria and Jane jerked their heads around. The whisper had come from Upchuck, who had been crouching upon a tree limb just outside Jane's window, taking snapshots of their pillow fight.

"YOU'RE A DEAD MAN, UPCHUCK!" Daria roared, holding her pillow up for emphasis. She immediately pulled out the pillow and started stuffing it full of heavy things laying about Jane's room, her friend following suit. Upchuck, realizing his folly, began to scramble down the tree in a futile attempt to flee to safety. 


	45. Footballs Like White Elephants

Footballs Like White Elephants

Kevin strutted down the hall of Lawndale High, having won the big game against Oakwood last night by kicking the ball between the goalposts. A reporter from the school newspaper came up to him. "Kevin, I have to say, that was a great kick you made last night," the reporter complimented.

"Hey, thanks!" Kevin beamed back.

"Is that the best kick you've ever done?"

Kevin shook his head. "Naw. One time, Brittany told me she was pregnant, so

THE END

I have no idea if quarterbacks actually do the kicking thing or not.

Also, I'm so going to hell. 


	46. Hugz

"I kissed your boyfriend."

"What?"

"I kissed your boyfriend. I kissed Tom. I didn't mean to."

Jane began to run off.

"Jane, wait!"

Against all common sense, Jane turned around. Daria stood there, looking contrite, her arms spread. "Hugz?"

The hurt look on Jane's face melted away as the two friends skipped towards each other, embracing in a hug of warm fuzzy feelings and eternal camaraderie. "HUGZ!" they shouted in tandem, joyous grins on both their faces.

Hugz. 


	47. Swordfighting

Swordfighting

Jamie stood triumphantly over the fallen-but-still-alive forms of his friends Joey and Jeffy. The exuberant shouts of thousands that had been cascading throughout the Coliseum ceased as one as all eyes turned to Empress Quinn. Jamie watched intently as he waited for Quinn to give the thumbs up (sparing Joey and Jeffy's life), or the thumbs down (which would seal their fate).

After nearly a minute without movement, Quinn held out her hand, thumb to the side. The collective gasps of anticipation were enough to generate a slight breeze within the great structure. Finally, the Empress made, not a thumbs up or a thumbs down, but a circle, utilizing her thumb and forefinger. Puzzled, Jamie watched as Quinn raised up her other hand, index finger extended, and threaded the finger in and out of the hole. It was quite obvious what act she was mimicking.

"She has to be kidding," Jamie muttered aloud, but there was no mirth evident on her face. After exchanging a worried glance with his fallen comrades, the trio - reluctantly - began to disrobe.

XXXXXXXXXX

Inspired by the webcomic Oglaf, and written for the 'There can only be ONE...' Iron Chef proposed by Fhujeth_x on the PPMB. 


	48. This Is Yes Fun

This Is Yes Fun

"Well, go on in, Daria," Erin gestured.

Daria looked pensively at the hospital room door and, after taking a nervous gulp, pushed it open.

There on the hospital bed, kept alive by the greatest medical science money could buy, was her grandfather, 'Mad Dog' Morgendorffer.

Daria must have made a sound, because he opened his eyes and turned to her. And said one word.

"Hugz."

Something changed within Daria. The miasma she had sunk into the past few weeks evaporated in a flash. A sensation like a millon brightly-colored hot air balloons powered by the farts of butterflies rose up in her stomach, and she smiled so wide she pulled a muscle and would later be unable to stop smiling for several days (not that she wanted to).

She dashed towards Mad Dog, arms extended, and crushed him in an embrace. "HUGZ!" she screamed out in joy.

"Hugz..." And with that, Mad Dog closed his eyes for the last time.

Hugz.

XXXX

Erin peeked in on Daria. "Oh my GOD! You crushed him to death!"

Daria turned towards Erin, a mad gleam in her eye. "Hugz!" she said, and Erin pooped herself in fear. It was the last thing she would do.

XXXXXXXXXX

I wrote this as an unofficial sequel of sorts to the 40th entry in Charles RB's God Save the Esteem series. If you're unfamiliar with that series, in the latest entry, Daria is feeling rather down in the dumps, so I decided to write this up real quick to cheer up the thread the story was originally posted in. Unfortunately, I took a detour to Cracktown before I finished. Whoops!

(Eagle eyed readers will notice that this story calls back to a previous short story, Hugz). 


	49. Daria's New Clothing

Daria's New Clothing

Jane turned from the TV as she heard three quick raps on her door, but before she could call out as to the identity of the knocker, Daria opened the door and let herself in. "You gotta hide me, Jane," she begged.

"Oh? Why?"

"Because today's...today's my birthday."

"Really?" Jane smiled. "Why didn't you tell me? Oh, and happy birthday!" Jane then frowned. "Wait. Hide you from who? And why?"

"Hide me from my family, Jane, because of the birthday suit tradition."

"...Come again?"

"You know, when your birthday comes around, you have to wear your birthday suit." Daria began to disrobe as she spoke, causing Jane's eyes to bug out.

"Um. Daria. That's not any tradition I've ever heard of."

Daria shrugged, causing some interesting jiggles. "Maybe not in Lawndale," she concluded.

Jane tore her gaze back up to Daria's face. "If you don't want to...uh, wear your birthday suit...why not just, you know...wear actual clothes?"

Daria rolled her eyes. "It's just that I don't want to both hang out with my family and let it all hang out at the same time."

"Ah." Arguments against the absurdity of the birthday suit tradition raced through Jane's mind, and she did consider very strongly using them.

Instead, she grinned and said, "Daria, it just so happens today is my birthday too!" She began tugging at her clothes as fast as she could.

XXXXXXXXXX

When I was a young lad, I thought that this was an actual thing some people did, go naked on their birthday. I based this brilliant line of thought on a line I heard from an episode of Wonder Years, how one (dude) character had seen another (lady) character in her birthday suit, and having never heard the phrase before, the image I concocted was of a person wearing nothing but a cheapo party hat, just hanging out at their birthday party naked. (Have I ever mentioned that I was a reeeeeally weird kid?)

I wrote this for the PPMB 'Happy Birthday Daria' IC proposed by Vukodlak, in which the suggestion was write Daria fleeing from her friends and family plotting to force her to celebrate her birthday. 


	50. Cynicspace

There was a lull in the conversation as Daria and Jane were walking to school. Not unusual. What was unusual, however, was Jane giving Daria a mischievous smirk before grabbing her forcefully by the wrist and yanking her behind a tall hedge next to the sidewalk for some privacy.

"Jane, what -" Daria was cut off as Jane thrust her tongue into her friend's mouth.

Daria's inner selves did not like this at all.

This is because Daria's inner selves were the last of a race of microscopic cynics from a really tiny planet that had been destroyed. They had fled the destruction of that planet in a gigantic (by their scale) spaceship made in the shape of their collective species (as they all looked the same).

The cause of the destruction of their planet was a marauding race of really tiny artists who were upset with the dye job the green-jacketed species had done on them. They had pursued the Daria-ship in their own Jane-ship, modeled after themselves (of course). The reason the Inner Darias hadn't recognized the Jane-ship was from one slight change the Inner Janes had made to their ship design - the Inner Janes only had two earrings on their left ear, whereas the Janeship had three.

The massive tonguing the Janeship was laying on the Dariaship was, in fact, a boarding action by the Inner Janes. They rushed down the throat and into the nerve center of the vessel - the stomach - where they immediately slammed all the Inner Darias down and forced their tongues down their enemies' itty bitty throats.

For you see, the Inner Darias and Inner Janes were all really vessels populated by Inner Inner Darias and Inner Inner Janes who had respectively fled and caused the destruction of planets roughly the size of a molecule of artificial sweetener. The Inner Inner Janes put the Inner Inner Darias into yet another lip-lock, because they were filled with Inner Inner Inner Janes who had destroyed the electron-sized planet of the Inner Inner Inner Darias, and the Inner Inner Inner Inner Darias and Inner Inner Inner Inner Janes had their quarrel over a quark, and when science discovers the Higgs Boson or whatever else is smaller than a quark, you can bet that there'll be Inner Inner Inner Inner Inner Janes there to rush over to the Inner Inner Inner Inner Inner Darias and lay on some serious Frenching.

XXXXXXXXXX

My original thought upon seeing the title was a dwarf Daria controlling a larger robotic body from within the torso. This was quickly revised into an even smaller Daria running the show from a control center in the head, a la that one dude from Men In Black ("The galaxy is on Orion's belt!") I took that idea, threw it into the Pure Insanity Matrix, and this came out.

I do feel a little ashamed - this is, I think, the second time I've taken an IC and totally ignored everything but the title. However, since this might be the fanfic with the most Daria-on-Jane action ever written (what with the exponentially increasing Darias and Janes), I'm not feeling TOO bad about it. 


	51. Fiveever

Brittany and Kevin were eating at the pizza place, when Brittany got a serious look on her face. "Kevvie, will you love me forever?" she asked.

"No way!" Kevin said in response. Heartbroken, Brittany ran out into the street, where she was hit by a car and killed. Running outside, Kevin took her body into his arms and began to weep. "I was going to say I'll love you five-ever..."

From the sidewalk, Daria and Jane were crying. They liked it whenever a moron died, and they cried tears of happiness every time.

XXXXXXXXXX

I started an Iron Chef on the PPMB encouraging people to insert Daria characters into crappy email forwards, and included this as an example. (I cleaned it up considerably from the original, since while garbled English is hilarious, it can also melt peoples' brains over an extended period of time).

If you're unfamiliar with the original, just Google 'five-ever' and it should be in the first few responses. 


	52. Quinn the Pedagogue

"Sandi, just because someone can answer a simple question doesn't mean they're a pedagogue," Quinn said, smiling at Sandi.

Sandi frowned. "Um, Quinn, nobody accused you of touching little kids or anything." 


	53. Wrong Answer

Stacy Rowe stared at the top three lines of the history test that Mr. DeMartino had graded and handed back, beginning to hyperventilate. The first line of the test, written in the angry red ink favored by teachers everywhere, read "SEE ME AFTER CLASS." The second line, the first question of the test, asked, "Who was Adolf Hitler?"

And Stacy had written the third line. She had told herself repeatedly both before and during the test to NOT write what she had written, but she had apparently done so anyway. She didn't even remember writing it! Now Mr. DeMartino would yell at her, Ms. Li might expel her, her parents would never talk to her again...

All because Stacy, in a romantic daydream, had written "The sexiest man who ever lived," complete with little hearts over the Is. And, of course, she had filled the margins with drivel like "Mr. and Mrs. Hitler", "Mrs. Adolf Hitler", "Stacy Hitler" and the like.

XXXXXXXXXX

Two different sources inspired this:

1. A scene from 'Dick', in which one of the protagonists (a teenage girl) fantasizes about her romance with Richard M. Nixon.

2. The most off-putting dating profile I ever saw firsthand, a woman who openly admired Adolf Hitler (but found Ted Bundy to be sexier). 


	54. Salted Popcorn

Salted Popcorn

As Daria walked out of the movie theater, she licked the last of the salty taste from her fingers. She just LOVED movie theater popcorn.

Trailing (staggering) behind her, Tom looked completely out of it, the strangest look on his face.

"Did you enjoy the movie, Tom?" Daria asked, seemingly oblivious to the state her boyfriend was in.

"There was a movie?" he replied, a look of wonder on his face.

XXXX

Earlier...

Tom walked hand-in-hand with Daria past the concession stand, a fresh box of popcorn in his free hand. Before they entered the theater proper, Daria stopped and turned to him. "Tom, you're not going to do that trick with the hole at the bottom of the box of popcorn, are you?"

Tom reacted as if she had slapped him. "What? God no! What kind of guy do you think I am, Daria?"

Daria nodded. "Just checking." Without further ado, she grabbed the box from Tom, walked over to the nearest garbage can, and Tom watched agog as she dumped the popcorn, whipped out a penknife, and neatly cut a hole in the bottom of the box. She returned the box to him, staring him in the eye until he finally took it. He gulped nervously.

XXXXXXXXXX

When this story first came to mind, I considered replacing Tom with...Upchuck. Oh well! 


	55. Mr DeMartino in: Within Synchronization

Mr. DeMartino was finally fed up with Kevin's stupidity, and decided to relate the truth to his student. He would tell Kevin to leave his classroom, as he would be giving in to the grade-fixing schemes of Ms. Li, thus enabling Kevin to finally pass history.

"I know that I can't take no more, it ain't no lie," DeMartino sang. "I wanna see you out that door, baby, bye bye bye." 


	56. 1800Feisty!

Charles Ruttheimer the Third was reading a book with his legs propped up on the desk in front of him. The phone on the desk began to ring, prompting Upchuck to set the book down and answer it. "Yello?" he said casually. "Ah, the divine Miss Morgendorffer! How is college life treating you?" He listened intently as his old classmate Daria spoke. "How long I've been working here? Oh, just a few weeks now. ...You don't say? You don't say! Well, that would be a shame, but at least I'd finally get to have sex with you." Upchuck had to yank the headset away from his ear as the disgruntled shriek pounded his hearing. "It's quite simple, my feisty one: the dead cannot say no." Once again, he yanked the phone away, as Daria began melting the phone lines with the heat of her swearing. "So that's a no, then? Okay, well thank you for calling the Suicide Prevention Hotline!" He hung up, kicked his feet back up on the desk, and mentally marked down Daria as the 58th woman whose life he had saved. 


	57. Stacy 13

"All systems go," the voice over the radio said. "T minus ten seconds and counting."

A brief thrill ran through Stacy as she heard the voice. She was strapped into the rocket along with two other astronauts on the first expedition back to the moon in decades. She was to be the first woman on the moon. 'Suck it, Sandi,' she thought to herself, a smile on her face.

"...Three, two, one, liftoff!" With a tremendous shudder, the weight on Stacy increased tenfold as the tremendous rocket propelled her upwards into the heavens.

Suddenly, she began hyperventilating. "Commander Rowe, we're noticing an irregularity in your vitals..." mission control began.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP! WHAT AM I DOING ON THIS GODDAMN ROCKET? I'M GONNA DIEEEEEEEE!" She began flailing about wildly, banging on switches left and right.

The rocket exploded in a spectacular fireball, scattering bits of Stacy and her fellow astronauts for miles around. 


	58. Immackulate Conception

"Push! Push! I can see the head! It's..." The doctor fell silent.

"What?" Tom asked, holding Daria's hand (well, having his hand crushed by Daria's, but whatever). "What's wrong?"

"Uh...nothing," the doctor stammered. "The baby's fine."

"Goddamnit, don't give me that! Something's wrong!"

The doctor looked up from the little person leaving the big person for a moment. "Mr. Sloane, I can assure you that there are no...health complications for...for the child. Please, let me do my work."

After a tense moment, Tom nodded, and after a few more long minutes, the process was done, and the baby was out in the world, crying. One of the nurses took him away before Tom or Daria could get a look, getting him cleaned up and wrapping him in dry sheets before returning and handing him off to Daria. "Your baby, Mrs. Sloane," she said, apprehensive.

Daria took one look at her son and smiled. Tom, on the other hand, took one look at the newborn and felt his stomach constrict itself up into a tight knot.

The child's skin was dark brown. 


	59. The Boston Boxer

The Boston Boxer

Daria and Jane were enjoying the late spring weather in Boston, taking the opportunity to explore the city on a Saturday when neither of them had many assignments due at Raft or BFAC. Daria suddenly noticed a box out of one corner of her eye, laying down in an alleyway. "It's a box," she noted to herself.

Jane followed Daria's gaze. "It's a box, alright," she agreed. "Come on, let's -"

"It's more than a box," Daria said, cutting her off.

Jane eyed the container, a little soiled and weather-beaten by the Massachusetts weather. "Um, from here, it looks exactly like a box," Jane said, trying to steer her friend towards the new gallery that had opened just a few weeks ago that they hadn't had a chance to check out yet.

"I mean, that box is trying to tell me something." She began walking down the alleyway.

"If you say so," Jane acquiesced, playing along. "All I hear is the rustle of a gentle breeze wafting through cardboard. Quite soothing, really."

Daria took that in, thinking for a moment. Then: "You're right. It is soothing."

Crap. "I was kidding."

"No, there's something about it..." Disturbingly, she got down on her hands and knees and proceeded to crawl inside.

"Whuzzah?" came a muffled man's voice from inside. Daria had apparently disturbed a sleeping bum.

"Daria, what are you doing?" Jane hissed. "Get out of that thing!"

Daria ignored her. "Yes. This is right."

"Daria! Damnit!" Jane crouched down and looked at her friend. The box reeked of the smell of cheap wine, but that was likely just the hobo, who was looking at Daria with an eager smile.

"Hey lady, can I touch yer boobs?" asked the bum.

XXXXXXXXXX

I asked myself the question, "What if the Morgendorffers' refrigerator had never broken at the beginning of Boxing Daria?" And this was the answer to that question. 


	60. The Ice Cream Man Cometh

"Hey mistew, couwd I pweeaze have a fudgicle?"

Mack looked up from the nudie mag and to the exterior of the ice cream truck. A little girl, no more than five, was giving him a pouty look, her hand extended, a dollar clutched in it.

"I'm on my break." He looked back to the publication in his hands, Women With Inordinately Large Breasts Monthly.

"I'd weawwy wike a fudgicle, pweease," the girl continued.

Mack leapt out of his seat and thrust half his body outside the truck. "I SAID I WAS ON MY GODDAMN BREAK, YOU LITTLE SHIT!"

At that outburst, the little one began to cry, but she still wouldn't move. Mack got an idea.

"Hey, hey, I'm sorry I yelled at you. Here, let me get you that fudgesicle, young lady."

"Oh-okay," the girl said, wiping the tears out of her eyes with the backs of her hands, after handing Mack her dollar.

Mack opened the cooler, got out a fudgesicle, and took off the wrapper. He held it out of the truck, a smile on his face. "Here you go!"

Joy in the child's face, as she reached for the treat...only to be denied at the last minute, as Mack hocked a huge loogie onto the fudgesicle. To add insult to injury, he then hurled the fudgesicle as far as he could behind the little girl. "GO FETCH, YOU LITTLE BITCH!"

This finally prompted the little girl to run off, crying and screaming for all she was worth.

XXXXXXXXXX

This was written for the 'Mack is a Dick' IC proposed by Charles RB on the PPMB. It isn't Mack being a dick so much as it is Mack being an evil son of a bitch, but once the idea came into my head, I had to let it out. (Plus, I never do things by halves). 


	61. Bee Eff Eff

Bee Eff Eff

Stacy woke up, stretched, yawned, and then smiled as she remembered it was her 18th birthday. "Oh boy oh boy oh boy!" she whispered silently to herself.

Right off the bat, she noticed a wrapped present on her vanity. Walking over to it, she wondered if it was from her mom, or maybe Susie.

"Stacy," the note on it began. "I snuck in earlier this morning and left you this present. I hope you enjoy it for the rest of your life! Your BFF, Sandi."

Stacy's heart swelled with joy that Sandi would call HER her BFF! Wasting no time, she tore off the wrapping and opened the box.

Dozens of angry bees swarmed out. Stacy began screaming as they stung her face and arms repeatedly, blinding her. She could feel them crawling up her nose and into her mouth even as she threw her hands up to stop them, to no avail. Finally, anaphylaxis took hold and she fell to the ground, dying within a few minutes.

As Sandi drove off, she laughed and laughed and laughed. 


	62. Dye! Dye! All Men

Dye! Dye! All Men

Apprehensive, Daria approached the car parked in front of her home and leaned down to look into the window. "Hey," Tom greeted.

"What are you doing here?" Daria asked, suspicious.

"I wanted to talk to you. Your mother said you weren't home so I figured I'd wait out here."

"Do you want to come in?" she offered.

"No! There are girls in there practicing fifteen different ways to annihilate a man's genitals. I got kind of scared."

"That's just the opening rites of the Morgendorffer Self-Defence Seminar. At least you got out before the rhythmic chanting."

"Oh yeah, I think I saw that on the Discovery Channel. Why don't you get in the car?"

Daria hesitated for a moment, thinking about what would happen if she gave in to his suggestion. Then, she yanked the rape whistle out of her pocket and blew on it. Hard.

Instantly, her mother Janet Morgendorffer knocked down the front door, followed by her sister Quinn and her fashion fiends, all of whom were wearing their black belt marital arts outfits.

Daria pointed at Tom and screamed "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!" at the top of her lungs. Tom's face was the perfect blend of shock, terror, and that one emotion you get when you poop yourself.

"KILL THE RAPIST!" Janet cried out, clenching her fists (upon which were boxing gloves that had rusty nails and broken glass glued to them). Tom hurriedly tried to gun the ignition as the enraged woman and her discples closed the distance...

XXXXXXXXXX

I thought to myself, "What if Janet Barch was actually Daria's mom?" (Inspired somewhat by the Jake/DeMartino swap IC). This was the result. 


	63. Strife in the Past Lane

"Trent? TRENT?!" Daria called out in a panic as she rushed into the Lane household. She took the stairs two at a time and reached Trent's doorway. Inside, Trent was blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

"Oh, hey, Daria. What -"

"Jane called me. She said that Nathan had kidnapped her, and said some stuff about a time machine -"

There was a sudden loud crack which came from Jane's room. Perturbed, Daria and Trent went over to investigate.

Standing in the middle of the room was a large object, about the size of a phone booth. It opened and out came Jane...and Daria. At least, Daria thought it was her. The woman (she WAS a woman, not a teen like Daria) looked a lot like her, though she leaned a bit more towards Aunt Amy than she did.

"Daria!" Jane called out, smiling. She ran forward and embraced her friend. "You saved me!"

"I did?" She looked from Jane to her older self, uncertain.

"Well, after I got Jane's phone call, I was sure the time travel stuff was just Nathan being a fucking lunatic," Older Daria spoke up. Younger Daria was surprised at the casual way she swore. "After a few months, when Jane's body didn't turn up, I did some research, and found the crazy bastard in a newspaper from 1953. He really did have a time machine. He apparently forced Jane into a marriage, and they both died about twenty years ago...or rather, ten years ago, from this point in time." She shook her head and laughed. "Fuckin' time travel."

Daria frowned. "Wait, if Jane died, then how..."

"The time machine," both older and younger said simultaneously.

"Yeah, I guess Nathan destroyed the original, and he had the blueprints buried with him."

"You dug up his grave?"

"Wouldn't YOU dig up a grave in order to save Jane?" Older Daria asked.

"Apparently I would."

"Touche. Anyway, it took me a decade to puzzle out the machine and scrape together enough money to build it. Afterwards, it was easy shit to go back, rescue Jane, kick Nathan in the balls, and put him in his machine (before he had a chance to destroy it) and program it to deposit him into the future."

"How far into the future?" Daria asked.

Older Daria shrugged. "Dunno...I just held down the 9 button for a few minutes under the 'years' setting. He'll probably pop out sometime after the end of the entire universe."

Daria considered this for a moment. "Not bad, not bad. But why did you bring Jane back now, instead of your own time?"

"Well, she IS still your age, not mine. It'd be strange if she showed up in Lawndale ten years later and not having aged a day."

"True, true."

"Besides, I don't really have much of a life upstream...or a family. I alienated a lot of people with my time machine stuff...even mom and dad and Quinn." She bit her lip, deep in thought. "I'm not sure how willing they'll accept me now, but fuck it, I'll try anyway."

She then seemed to notice Trent for the first time. "Hey there, stranger," she...purred? Daria kept being surprised by her older self. "I haven't seen you in, what, eight years? Nine?"

"Uh...hey, Daria," Trent muttered. He was very much put off-guard by the look she was giving him...not to mention the way she was walking towards him. And the way she licked her lips in anticipation.

Daria took his arm, then looked back at Jane and her younger self. "You kids might want to make yourself scarce for the next few hours," she said, a very naughty grin on her face.

As Daria and Jane fled the house, Jane turned to Daria with a huge grin on her face.

"Shut up, Lane," Daria growled.

"I didn't even say anything!" Jane said gleefully.

"And if you do, it'll be the last thing you ever say," Daria menaced.

"...You think she'd be up for a threesome with you?"

"THAT'S IT! YOU'RE DEAD, LANE!" Daria roared, chasing her much-faster friend down the block as Jane laughed her head off.

XXXXXXXXXX

Originally, this was going to be the ending of the story, with me actually writing out all the events that Future Daria outlines, but in the end, laziness won out. I think this works just fine on its own, anyway. 


	64. All Out Of Gum

Daria raised her hand to the stinging red mark on her cheek, where her mother (now staring aghast at her own hand) had slapped her.

"...Oh my God, Daria, I'm -"

Daria interrupted her mother with her own slap, shutting up the older woman instantly. Her eyes bugged out at Daria for a split second, then she returned the slap back to her daughter.

It took Daria but a second to decided to slap back again.

Helen didn't slap back. She curled her hand into a fist and launched it square into the middle of her daughter's face, knocking her to the ground.

Daria reached up and felt her tender nose. She didn't think it was broken, but it was certainly bleeding. She looked up at her mother, grinning unnaturally, her teeth stained red by the rivulets of blood coursing down from her nostrils. Helen recoiled half a step at the sight, which gave her enough momentum for Daria to pounce and knock her mother to the ground.

After that, the fight really began in earnest.

XXXX

Jake and Quinn, from their hiding spots upstairs, waited for the commotion to die down a while before poking their heads out of their rooms. They had been present for the slap, and had had the good sense to flee upstairs before things had gotten really heated (and oh, how heated they had gotten, by the sound of it).

Jake gulped. "Let's go scope out the damage, Quinn."

Quinn nodded and followed her father downstairs and into the kitchen.

Where the found Helen and Daria laughing over a bottle of half-empty whiskey.

Both of them bore the indicators of a pretty severe fight: torn clothing, scratches, bruises, and there was now a gap where one of Helen's front teeth was supposed to be. Daria held an icepack to her head. Yet, they appeared to be closer than ever now.

"Helen, Kiddo...are you alright?" Jake asked, unbelieving.

"Oh Jakey, I've never been more alright!" Helen crowed, and also slurred a little. "I don't ev...even remember why I hit Daria in the first place!" She now whistled on her S's, a consequence of her missing tooth.

"I called you a hipplecritical bitch, I think," Daria hiccuped, then giggled. Giggled!

"I swear," Helen sweared. "If I had known that a little ass-kicking would be the biggest mother-daughter bonding experience ever, I would have wrecked your shit years ago!"

Daria smiled and nodded. "Hey, maybe Quinn and I'll be closer if we kick each other's ass!" She stood up from her seat, staggered over to an incredulous Quinn, and socked her fashionable younger sister right in the gut, causing her to double over. Daria then kicked her sister in the face, the act causing her to lose her tenuous grip on balance and fall to the floor.

Quinn looked her sister in the face, murder in her eye. "That was my fucking FACE!" She straddled Daria and began slamming her head into the kitchen linoleum over and over.

"Ah, our children are growing closer," Helen smiled, as Jake looked on in absolute horror. "I think I'll call up my sisters and do some bonding of my fists with their faces..."

XXXXXXXXXX

Started out as a parody of the "Helen slaps Daria" convention. Turned into Fight Club. Yeah. 


	65. Education Is No Laughing Matter

Education Is No Laughing Matter

Helen looked from the acceptance letter, back up to Daria in that ridiculous outfit, and back again. "What happened to Bromwell? Or Raft?"

Daria shrugged. "Those were just my safeties. I really wanted to get into this place most of all."

"Daria, what about your career? I thought you wanted to pursue an English degree, or maybe something in journalism."

Daria frowned, though it was hard to tell with the smile plastered onto her face. "Maybe I wanted a change of careers. Did you ever think of that?"

"Sweetie...this is a clown college!"

"You're wrong, mom," Daria replied bitterly. "It's a clown UNIVERSITY. It's a highly prestigious learning institution." Angrily, she shoved a cream pie into her mother's face before stomping upstairs, her overly large shoes squeaking with each stomp. 


	66. Different Strokes

Mr. O'Neill liked to watch Ted stroke off. He himself enjoyed stroking off occasionally, but now he was focusing all his energy on helping Ted get better at stroking off. He would stroke off in front of his student, giving tips on improving his form. He and Ted would often take extra time after school, working on stroking off. Mr. O'Neill was very pleased at the rate with which Ted was improving his skills at stroking off.

Finally, the practice paid off, and Ted brought home a golfing trophy. 


	67. Different Strokes II

Different Strokes II

One day, Ms. Defoe watched Jane stroking her paint brush. She decided to show Jane how she stroked herself.

Ms. Defoe went to prison for a very long time. 


	68. Unscareable

Unscareable

"Dad, I'd like you to meet my new boyfriend," Daria said.

"Oh? Well let me say helloooOOOOOAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHH HH!" Jake had stood up out of his chair and turned around to greet Daria's boyfriend.

He was a skeleton.

"I met him on Bone-Me dot com," Daria explained.

"Guten tag," the skeleton said jovially, reaching out a bony hand to Jake.

"He speaks German?" Jake wondered out loud.

"Oh yeah," Daria nooded. "It makes sense...since he was ADOLF HITLER'S SKELTON!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" 


	69. Money Can't Buy Me Love

"You want me to WHAT?" Daria said, shocked.

It was weird when Brittany had slipped her the note after the last class of the day inviting her over. It was weird when the note stressed to come alone. It was weird when she saw only Brittany's and Kevin's cars in the driveway of her house on Crewe Neck, and not those of her father or step-mother. And absolutely nothing was as weird as what the football fiends had said to her.

"Well, Daria, Kevvy and I were trying to figure out how we can stop cheating on each other, and I read in one of the magazines Ashley Amber used to pose in that couples can spice up their love life by bringing a third person into the bedroom."

"Yeah!" Kevin added excitedly. "And 'cause you're like, a brain and stuff, Brittany won't get all jealous. That part was my idea!" A proud smile adorned the QB's face.

"You're sooo smart, Kevvy!" Brittany gave her beloved a peck on the cheek.

"Why not bring a second guy into this trainwreck instead?" Daria asked.

Kevin's face twisted in disgust. "Gross! I'm not into dudes!"

Brittany's face had a more thoughtful look, but she soon shrugged. "Well, we needed someone both Kevvy and I can enjoy."

Daria rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I take it that you're bisexual, then?"

Brittany nodded enthusiastically. "If you don't want to do this, Daria, it's okay...but Kevvy and I have a thousand dollars saved up we could give you..."

XXXX

Jane just happened to be taking a large sip of Ultra Cola at that point in the story, and a significant portion of it suddenly came out her nose, as she began coughing in surprise at the money amount. After she had blown her nose and removed all traces of the soda, she returned her focus to Daria. "A thousand big ones? You're shitting me!"

Daria shook her head. "I wish I was. After that, I told them that no amount of money would ever prompt me to sleep with them."

After that, Daria moved the conversation on to other topics, until finally she shrugged and said it was time to go home. Something had been tickling the back of Jane's mind the whole time, though, and before Daria could walk out, she stopped her. "Wait! Daria...what happened after you turned Brittany and Kevin down?"

Daria looked at Jane unblinking for a good five seconds. Finally, giving an entirely un-Daria-like smile, she replied: "Who says I turned them down?"

Jane's mouth fell open in shock. "But...but you just said-!"

Daria nodded. "I said that I would never sleep with them for money, Jane." Smile still on her face, she put down the money to pay for her pizza and walked out of the Pizza King, Jane frozen to her seat in utter disbelief.

XXXXXXXXXX

I was perusing my "Not for public consumption folder" (the one where I stick fics that should never see light of day), and I stumbled across this gem. I really wonder what Past Me thought about it that was so bad as to warrant never letting it out into the open? So I cleaned it up a bit, and here it is. :D 


	70. Stunted Daria

Ms. Li was furious with Daria. "Just what the HELL do you think you were doing?!" she roared. "When I tell your parents about this little stunt -"

"LITTLE stunt?" Daria shot back. "I jumped over eight buses! That was a BIG stunt!"

Daria had showed up at school one day in a flame-retardant star-spangled jumpsuit with matching helmet (rather reminsicent of Evel Knievel) just as the buses were unloading. She had set up the ramp the night before, and nobody had taken it down in the meantime. She revved the engines of her stunt motorcycle once, twice, three times, then opened it up and flew.

"It doesn't matter! You endangered student lives, for which I intend to see you expelled!"

"Oh, come off it Li. I made sure to wait until the buses had all unloaded before my jump. The only student whose life I endangered was my own."

"Be that as it may, your actions amused nobody."

Daria simply stood up and opened the door to Ms. Li's office a crack. The students' faint chanting "DA-RI-A! DA-RI-A!" were clearly audible.

As Daria walked back to the chair, a thoughtful look appeared on her face. "I think next week, I want to try for ten buses."

"TEN buses! Why the HELL do you think I'll agree to something like that?"

"Simple: Sell tickets for it."

Ms. Li was shocked silent for a moment, before a greedy grin spread on her face. Wordlessly, she extended her hand and shook on it with Daria. 


	71. The Snook-Alike Series

The Snook-Alike Series

Daria and Jane were seeing an unusual number of guidos and guidettes (is that the official name for lady guidos?) at school that day. "Daria, did Ms. Li agree to an exchange program with Oompa-Loompa Land?"

"It's better than the alternative."

"And that is?"

Daria was cut off by the sound of the loudspeaker coming on. "Attention students! I am pleased to announce that the new MTV show, 'Jersey Shore Goes High School', will be filmed here, at Lawndale High!" Ms. Li enthusiastically said, rolling the 'L' in Lawndale, as was her wont.

When Daria got home, she found out that her parents had invited Snookie to stay in Daria's room and borrow all her clothes.

Daria hung herself in her closet.

THE END

XXXXXXXXXX

Apologies to Canadibrit for taking the TLAS series title and adding a dash of anti-culture. 


	72. The Bung Hole

The Bung Hole

Butt-Head was moseying down the sidewalk absent his usual compadre Beavis when he spied a car idling in front of Schloss Head. He looked into the passenger side window to see who was inside, and what they were doing at his house.

"Hey," Daria greeted.

"Uh, huh-huh, hey, Diarrhea. What are, like, you doing here?" he asked.

"I wanted to talk to you," the bespectacled girl said. "Beavis said you weren't home so I figured I'd wait out here."

"Uh, huh-huh," Butt-Head looked towards the house. "Do you, like, want to come in?"

"No! Beavis is in there rubbing stuff on himself. I got kind of revolted."

"Oh yeah," Butt-Head said, remembering why he had left to go for a walk in the first place. "Huh-huh-huh, what a dillweed," he concluded.

"Why don't you get in the car?" Daria suggested.

"Uh, huh-huh, okay." Butt-head slid into the passenger seat next to Daria. "Uh, what's up?"

"I want to talk, Butt-Head," Daria said.

"Uh. About what?"

"Our situation."

"What?" Butt-Head was confused. "Like, what situation?"

"Butt-Head..." Daria took off her glasses seductively. "I want to do it with you."

"Uh, no way!" Butt-Head tried the door of the car, but it was locked.

"Come on, Butt-Head, I can tell you want to look at my thingies," she breathily said. "You totally have a stiffy." Ignoring his screams of protest, she slid over to his side of the car, and then...

XXXX

"And then Daria totally raped me, huh-huh-huh," Butt-Head chuckled.

"Butt-Head, can you point out the horrible monster that did this to you?" his attorney Joe Adler said.

"Uh, yeah." He pointed to Daria, sitting next to her mother/attorney, the look on both their faces one of murder.

"And then she burned the house down with Beavis still inside," Butt-Head concluded.

"Yeah! Fire, fire, ffffffire! Heh-heh-heh," Beavis chanted from the front row of the viewing seats, seriously damaging the credibility of Butt-Head's previous statement.

"Shut up, Beavis!" Butt-Head chided. "You're supposed to be, like, dead."

"No way! I, uh, just wanted to say that Daria raped me, not Butt-Head. Butt-Head died in the fire! Heh-heh-heh!"

Joe Adler sighed. Somedays, he really regretted drinking his way through law school.

XXXXXXXXXX

An homage to the Deacblue fanfic 'The Black Hole', with a considerably lighter tone than the source material. 


	73. In The Year 2101 If Daria Is Still Alive

In The Year 2101, If Daria Is Still Alive

"Hey Daria, did you know that today is 12/12/12?" Jane said as she painted at her easel. "This is the last time within our lifetimes that the date is all the same number."

"'Our' lifetime?" Daria asked scornfully, as she continued working on the blueprints for an immortal robot to house her brain.

XXXXXXXXXX

Written for the "I'm concerned about an important date!" IC proposed by PrecambrianStudios on the PPMB, in which he invited people to write about the date 12/12/12. 


	74. Everybody Needs a Hobby

Everybody Needs a Hobby

Jane turned to her new friend Daria as the bad movie they were watching went to a commercial break. "Say, Daria, do you have any hobbies?"

"Speculums."

"You see, I was just wonder...ing..." Jane hadn't anticipated an answer so fast. "...Oh. Ha ha, Daria. Come on, seriously. Do you have any hobbies?"

Daria turned to Jane and stared into her soul for a moment, making her more and more uncomfortable. Finally, Daria spoke again. "Did you know they have speculums for all your holes?" Slowly, Daria licked her lips. "ALL your holes."

Jane's face crumpled into a horrified grimace as she scooted as far to the other side of the couch as she could whilst shaking her head.

Daria moved over to Jane and straddled the quivering girl, putting her arms to either side of her head as she leaned in close enough so that they were almost kissing. "Do you want to guess how many I'm using right now?" she asked, in a voice barely above a whisper.

Jane pushed her head as far back into the upholstery as it could go, letting out a strained "Nnnnooooo."

Daria shrugged, got off of Jane, and returned to her spot on the other side of the couch. "Anyway, my hobby is messing with people who ask if I have hobbies." 


	75. The End Zone

The End zone

"So, Mack Daddy, are you worried about the world coming to an end tomorrow?" Kevin asked after football practice, a note of concern in his voice.

"No," Mack replied, irate. "And don't call me that."

"But what about those Mayan dudes, and their calendar?"

"Look, Kevin, it's already December 21st on the other side of the world, so if it was going to happen, we would have exploded by now."

Kevin pondered this for a few moments. "Oh yeah!" he said exuberantly, remembering the existence of time zones.

That night, though, once midnight crept over Central America, the doomsday device buried beneath the Mayan ruins went off, shattering the globe into a trillion trillion trillion pieces. Wah wah wah wahhhhhhhh.

XXXXXXXXXX

If the scenario I describe in this fic actually happens, then this means that this might very well be the last Daria fanfic ever written! Hahahaha. 


	76. Sound and Fury

"Girls, I just want you to know your mother and I realize it's not easy moving to a whole new town - especially for you, Dar-"

A loud fart cut off Jake mid-sentence.

"Oh my GOD!" Quinn screamed, hurriedly rolling down a window.

XXXX

"Now, Dora, let's see if you can make up a story as vivid as your sister's."

"It's Daria," Daria answered, visibly annoyed.

"I'm sorry...Daria. What do you see in the picture, Dara?"

Daria leaned to the side, allowing enough room for the monster fart she had started to let out escape and enter the room.

"Not AGAIN!" Quinn cried, fleeing the room.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Mrs. Manson demanded.

XXXX

"Daria, can you concisely and unemotionally sum up for us the doctrine of Manifest Destiny?"

Daria stood, bent over just a little, and violated the nostrils and eardrums of her classmates. "My ass was the United States, and everybody in this room was a Mexican or Native American."

Through gritted teeth and pinched nose, DeMartino growled, "Very good, Daria...revoltingly good. All right, class. Who can tell me which war Manifest Destiny was used to justify?" Daria bent over again. "Sit down, Daria!" DeMartino shouted.

Too late.

XXXX

"Then they asked me to join the pep squad. They said I didn't have to try out, but I said, 'Look, I'm new here. Give me a chance to get used to things.' So, for now, I'm vice president of the Fash-" Quinn's diatribe about her day was interrupted by Daria letting loose yet again. "DAMNIT, Daria!" Quinn cried out in horror, before rushing upstairs and slamming the door to her room shut (no doubt lining the cracks in her door with air-tight materials).

Grimacing, Jake soldiered on. "Well, Daria, what about you? How was your first day?"

Daria simply farted again. "That pretty much covers it."

XXXX

"Esteem...a teen. They don't really rhyme, do they? The sounds don't quite mesh." Mr. O'Neill began speaking louder and louder. "And that, in fact, is often the case when it comes to a teen and esteem." He was now practically screaming. "The two just don't seem to go together! BUT WE ARE HERE TO BEGIN REALIZING YOUR ACTUALITY!"

Out of breath, Mr. O'Neill began panting heavily, and a few seconds later, the monstrously long fart that Daria had let out over his entire opening statement finally tapered off. Daria blithely raised her hand.

"Yes?" Mr. O'Neill asked, already too beaten down to try and defer Q&A time.

"I want to know what 'realizing your actuality' means."

"It means..." Mr. O'Neill gave up talking as the grotesquely loud squeals filled the room with the rancid stench once more, and he simply crawled under his desk and proceeded to suck his thumb.

The black-haired girl who sat next to her leaned over. "I have to say, I've found your antics over the past two days to be..."

"Sickening?" Daria prompted.

The girl's voice took on a low, husky tone. "Erotic." Daria's interest piqued, she leaned closer to encourage Jane. "What do you say we go to the bakery, get a cake..." Jane licked her lips at this. "...and then head back to my place?"

Daria's response was a brief fart. Arm in arm, the two weirdoes left the classroom.

XXXXXXXXXX

There is something seriously, seriously, seriously wrong with me. 


	77. Deflowered

True Depravity

Ken Edwards leered over his prey. "See...love can be so simple when the hand of experience nurtures the budding flower to full blossom..." His hand reached down, and...

"Hey, you asshole!" The lady who ran the florist shop spied Ken as he attempted to swipe some begonias. "You're the same asshole from last week who swiped those chrysanthemums!"

Spooked by her shouts, Ken ran away, but not before scooping up the begonias in one hand and flipping the bird with the other. "My flowers now, bitch!" 


	78. The Author as a Luchadore

"Now, Quinn, what do you see here?" Mrs. Manson held up a silhouetted image of two people in conversation, which Quinn was quick to point out. "That's right. Can you make up a little story about what it is they're discussing?"

"I'm not even supposed to be taking this test. I'm exempt."

Without missing a beat, Manson countered: "You won't be graded."

Assured of her educational safety, Quinn went on to spin a tale of an unhappy couple (the girl being unhappy because the boy wasn't a good enough sugar daddy, the boy being unhappy because the girl had insanely unrealistic expectations).

Mrs. Manson, being completely insane, approved Quinn's lifestyle ("Very good, Quinn!"). She then turned to her...sister, who wore a green coat over an orange t-shirt. The coat and t-shirt both had their sleeves torn off, though, and the girl's arms were quite muscular. Most unsettling was the full-head mask which covered Daria's face, it sharing the same color scheme as her jacket/t-shirt combo. "Now, Dora, let's see if you can make up a story as vivid as your sister's."

"Yo soy...Daria..." Daria said dramatically in a husky fake Spanish accent.

"I'm sorry...Daria. What do you see in the picture, Dara?"

Daria then suplexed Mrs. Manson.

XXXXXXXXXX

Inspired very loosely by DeacBlue's "The Author as a Lesbian" series. 


	79. His and Hers

Mr. DeMartino eyed Ms. Barch as she ate her salad in the teacher's lounge. Alone. "Your loss, Timothy," he chuckled to himself as he walked over and slipped into the chair on the opposite side of the table.

"What do you want, you MAN?" she growled bitterly at him.

"Janet, I may teach history..." He placed one hand gently over hers, offering her a warm smile. "But it should really be called HERstory."

Janet Barch's heart melted. They were married three months later. 


	80. Half of my Soul, Val of my Heart

Half of my Soul, Val of my Heart

Daria was jumping up and down, giddy. "Who the hell are you, and what did you do with Daria?" Jane asked.

"Val is coming to school today!" she squeed excitedly.

"Did you just SQUEE?" Jane said, incredulous. "And Val? As in, 'Val as in Val'?"

Daria ignored her best friend, for at that moment the doors to the school opened. The bright morning sun silhouetted the figure standing there, but Daria recognized it nonetheless and took off at a dead run, glomping onto the person.

She looked up into his beautiful green eyes, and murmured, "I loved you in Real Genius."

Jane walked up, more calmly. "Is this going to become a Thing, like Mr. T?"

"No," Daria answered, shoving the actor back out the door and slamming it shut before brushing herself off, acting like nothing happened.

XXXXXXXXXX

I Googled what Val Kilmer's eye color was, and came across Kilmer Safari, a painfully 90s webpage, upon which a garish neon 'VALligator' told me everything I wanted to know about Val Kilmer, but was afraid to ask. 


	81. International Chick of Misery

"As Melody sun-bathed on the Rio beach, she looked back upon the past few days and thought they were groovy, baby: twelve dead Russians, five dead Chinese, three or four dead Cubans. The world was once again safe for free love, she reflected while watching Long Johnson's shagedelic chest rise and fall with his light snoring. Safe for free love, or almost safe. Melody brushed some errant grains of sand off her fingers, tied her Venus symbol back around her neck, and reached into her beach bag. Tonio heard nothing, and that was a pity, because he would never hear anything again. "So long...Long," she thought as she calmly go-go danced. "I could have shagged you, if you weren't as red as the blood stain now spreading across the sand. You'll never have a newspaper in...circulation. You could really use a...Bloody Mary. Maybe next time you won't be so...vein. Okay, I'm done. Oh behave!" Melody walked calmly away toward the hotel. There'd be a message there from Basil Exposition, no doubt. She hoped she had time for a montage that showed her prancing around naked whilst hiding her naughty bits with objects that resembled her naughty bits."

XXXXXXXXXX

moooooooooooole. 


	82. Who Ya Gonna Call?

Who Ya Gonna Call?

"Hey kiddo, don't you think all ghost stories are optimistic?" Jake asked.

Daria groaned as she looked at the bedside clock - 2:55 in the morning - and struggled to think of an answer for her father. "Only the ones where blood pours out the elevator," she finally muttered. "Why the hell do you ask?"

"Well, they all suggest there's life after death," Jake pointed out.

"What about hell?" Daria suggested.

There was an uncomfortable silence. "Kiddo, I don't believe in hell."

"That's strange, I could have sworn this was it," Daria said, before hanging up.

XXXXXXXXXX

Based on an apocryphal conversation between Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick during the filming of The Shining (blood in the elevators, yes).

Written in response to the "My Dad, the director" IC, proposed by LSauchelli on the PPMB. 


	83. Boxing Daria: The Alternate Ending

Boxing Daria: The Alternate Ending

Daria, face covered in welts and bruises, staggered away from her opponent in the ring as she clutched the side of her head with one gloved hand, blood dripping down from the side.

Mike Tyson proceeded to spit out the bloody chunk of her ear and stared angrily towards the ceiling. "This isn't funny anymore! That fight was sixteen years ago! Quit bringing it up!" 


	84. Sing the Song That Ends the Earth

Sing the Song That Ends the Earth

"WOOMP THERE IT IS! WOOMP THERE IT IS!" Daria sang over and over, pumping her fist in tune to the 1993 hit by Tag Team.

On the other side of the observation glass, a tearful Helen was held by Jake, barely keeping it together himself. "Is...is there any hope for her?" she croaked out.

The doctor shook his head, defeated. "I'm afraid there's only one cure," he informed them, as he loaded the double-barrel shotgun in his arms.

"WOOMP THERE IT IS! WOOMP THERE IT IS! WOOMP THERE IT IS! WOOMP THERE IT IS!"

In the next isolation room over, Jane too was pumping her fist. Her rendition - "WOOMP THERE IT IS!" - went on unhindered as the sound of a shotgun blast rang out through the hospital, itself drowned out by ward after ward of citizens shaking their fists and chanting in rhythm.

XXXXXXXXXX

Woomp. There it is. 


	85. Taste of Penny

Taste of Penny

As her open lips pressed against that of her best friend's older sister, Daria decided she really liked the taste of Penny. Then she realized the coppery tang was subsiding and pulled back.

"Damn, scabbing up again?" Penny asked resignedly. Daria nodded, a hopeful look on her face. "Okay, here goes another." She reached over onto her nightstand, grabbed the pair of pliers, and with a quick motion ripped another tooth from her mouth, barely suppressing the roar of pain as blood once again flooded her mouth, followed hastily by Daria's tongue finding its way back in.

Daria really liked the taste of pennies. 


	86. Breaking Barch

Breaking Barch

Jane looked in horror between her now former best friend and their old science teacher. "Drugs! You're selling drugs!"

"We need the money," Daria replied with a shrug.

"And I can't exactly pay off my cancer treatments with what the school pays," Ms. Barch explained.

"I-I just can't listen to this. I don't want to know you." With that, Jane stormed out of the pharmacy, leaving the white-jacketed women to stare at one another in puzzlement before preparing the next prescription. 


	87. Uncivilized

Uncivilized

"Attention students!" Ms. Li's domineering voice came out over the school's speakers. "My words are now backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!" The speakers clicked off.

"You know, that's actually not the most threatening thing I've heard her say," Jane commented.

XXXXXXXXXX

Inspired by a quote from Civilization 2, wherein leaders of opposing civilizations would let you know when they had nukes. 


	88. The Kiss and the Make Up

"Hey! Daria!"

Daria cringed upon hearing her voice. She'd been a hanger-on at Camp Grizzly, and she'd dutifully palled around with Daria ever since she found out her "old pal Daria" had moved to Lawndale.

That wasn't the reason she'd cringed, though. "Oh. Hi, Amelia." Her words were stiff.

"How come we didn't walk to school together today?" Amelia asked with a frown. "We always walk to school together."

That wasn't quite true, as Daria usually did her best to duck out of spending any time with Amelia if she could help it, but had taken extra pains to avoid her all morning, even having her father take her to school and drop her off with barely enough time to make it to her first class of the day, so as to minimize the chances she would be intercepted in the halls by the overeager one.

"Hey, what's up?" Amelia repeated, worried about Daria's continued silence. "Come on, Daria, you can tell me anything."

"I kissed your boyfriend."

"What?" Amelia said, stopping short. "M-my boyfriend? Tom Sloane?"

Daria nodded. "I kissed your boyfriend. I kissed Tom. I didn't mean to."

Amelia's mouth began quivering and her eyes welled up. Still, though, she managed to partly swallow it down and speak. "Th-th-th-that's o-o-oh-okay, D-Daria," she stammered. "W-w-we were th-think-king ab-b-b-bout breakinnng up an-an-nyway..."

A clutch of students had loosely formed around the dramabomb-in-progress, whispers and chuckles flowing through them. Daria tried to ignore them as she focused on Amelia. "Are you for real? I kiss your boyfriend and you just say it's okay?" Daria knew on some level she was essentially asking to be punished, and she was okay with that - no matter how much she didn't care for Amelia's presence, she didn't deserve to be treated so shabbily.

Amelia shrugged, still holding back the tears. "W-what am I-I-I sup-posed to say, D-Daria?"

"Something! Anything other than 'Go ahead, take my boyfriend!' That's not something a real human says! If I was really your friend, you would actually be sad, or pissed off! I can even see on your face that you WANT to cry, but you don't think it's something I would want to do! So, for once, just cut out the fucking hero worship and do what YOU think you should do!"

Amelia crossed her arms in front of herself and looked down at the floor, mumbling something under her breath.

Daria took a step closer. "What was that?"

"YOU FUCKING BITCH!" Amelia suddenly lashed out and puched her 'friend' square in the face. The fury she felt dissolved instantly, and she looked on with supreme mortification as Daria fell back on her ass, clutching her nose in pain. "OMIGOD OMIGOD DARIA I'M SO SORRY!" she shouted, throwing her arms around her friend in a hug of mega-apology (and ignoring the cheers of the gathered students who had witnessed the slugging).

"I deserbed id," Daria said meekly, her voice obscured by her hands pinching her nose. She tentatively released the pinch and blood began running out, across her mouth and down the chin. "Oh disgusding," she muttered through half-closed lips, in order to keep the blood out.

"Let's get you to the school nurse, Daria," Amelia said, helping her friend stand up. Their gawking peers finally decided to disperse, the show apparently over.

"I thoughd I was a fuging bidch," Daria observed once she was back on her feet.

Amelia gave Daria another hug, a sideways one with one arm. "True friendships are forever, Daria," she said with a small smile. "I...I know you don't care much for my company, but you still put up with me anyway. And it's not like you two had...s-e-x," she spelled in a stage whisper, blushing a little at the thought.

Daria nodded. "Thangs agaid for beig yourself, Abelia," she said. "Id was refreshing."

"Do you think I should curse more?" Amelia asked. Daria nodded, prompting a playful grin from her. "Well, for one, fuck Tom, I'm breaking up with his cheating ass right after school. Wanna come watch? I'm gonna wait until his entire family is home, then bust in and call him a shithead."

"I wouldn'd miss id for the world," Daria assured her. It looked like she was stuck with Amelia forever, but the prospect suddenly didn't look so terrifying.

XXXXXXXXXX

Written for the 'Daria x Daria' crossover IC on the PPMB proposed by LSauchelli, in which concepts from two or more episodes of Daria are mashed together into one story. My concept was Dye! Dye! My Darling/Camp Fear, naturally, with Amelia having wholly overwritten Jane's role in the series.


	89. Alpha and Omega

Alpha and Omega

Daria and Quinn followed the principal as she gave a tour of the campus to the new students.

"As you can see, our Lawndale High students take great pride in their school. That's why you'll each be taking Lawndale High School's Diane Fossey Award for dazzling academic achievement in the face of near-total misanthropy!"

Daria looked down in confusion at the award as it was shoved in her hands. "Uh...thanks?"

XXXXXXXXXX

Same IC as the previous chapter, and the crossover is Esteemsters/Is It College Yet, natch.


	90. Ill 2: Ill Harder

Ill 2: Ill Harder

Helen and Jake hurriedly rose to their feet as Dr. Davidson approached. "How is she?" Helen asked.

"Please tell me my kiddo is going to be alright," Jake pleaded with him.

Dr. Davidson held up one hand to calm them down. "Your daughter will be fine, Mr. and Mrs. Morgendorffer. We've determined she has an infection from a bacteria known as clostridium difficile. We have a specialist coming in today who will be performing the operation -"

"OPERATION?!" Jake howled.

XXXX

Daria lay still in the hospital bed, the pain in her lower stomach almost too much to bear. She didn't even notice when her doctor entered the room, followed by her parents (with worried looks on their face) as well as two other people whom she paid no attention to at all.

She listened patiently (with her eyes clamped shut) as the doctor told her what she was infected with and that she would be undergoing surgery. "What kind of surgery?" she asked through gritted teeth.

"Well, Daria, we've brought in the specialist who will be performing your surgery, so I'll let him tell you about it. Dr. Davidson stepped to the back of the room, and that's when the horror of horrors stepped forward.

"Huh-huh, hey, uh, Diarrhea," Butt-head greeted. "You're gonna get a poop transplant," he said in the smug tone he used when making light of people's misfortunes.

"Heh heh heh, yeah!" Beavis chimed in, ever present when Butt-head was around. "And I'm, like, the source of the donor poop." Both boys proceeded to laugh wildly, to the discomfort of everybody in the room.

"No no no no no no NO NO NO NO!" Daria said, her voice rising to a scream by the end of the sentence. "I thought we left those two cretins back in Highland!" Her rant was several octaves higher than her usual speaking voice - she was too pissed off to preserve her usual stoic tone. "I am not - AM NOT - letting them anywhere near my body, not for some...some fucking made up disease."

Dr. Davidson once again stepped forward. "I suspected you would be...more than skeptical, given the behavior of these men, but I assure you their credentials are impeccable. And the procedure is a real one." He handed her a text from his office, a volume from a medical encyclopedia. "I took the liberty of bookmarking the relevant section for you."

Daria took the book from him and quickly began skimming the sentences. Her eyes bulged out, and she took the reading more slowly. It took her nearly ten minutes to finish the article, mainly because she kept skipping back to the top of the page where it said 'Fecal bacteriotherapy'. "You're shitting me," she said, somewhat carelessly.

"Uh, heh-heh, that's my job, uh, Daria," Beavis pointed out. "Heh-heh, I'm going to be shitting you."

Her face turned green and only a quick-thinking Dr. Davidson scooping the garbage can off the floor and shoving it in front of her prevented a giant gross mess in her bed. "I don't suppose you have Dr. Jack Kevorkian on staff, do you?" she asked Davidson.

XXXXXXXXXX

Yes, it is absolutely, absolutely real.


	91. My Night at Daria's: Alternate Ending

Tom erupted, losing all control as his hot fluids began spurting out.

"Oh yeah," Daria moaned, as she attempted to capture as much of his salty discharge in her mouth as she could. Still, much of it ended up splashing around her mouth, onto her neck, and running down her chest. She lovingly swallowed what she had caught, though, the ecstacy running all through her body.

Once Tom had finally run dry, she bent over and plucked the knife from the jagged hole she had torn through his throat. She scrutinized the corpse as she licked the knife clean of his blood. "Sorry, Tom," she shrugged. "I think I'd like to start seeing other people. You're just a bit flaccid now." 


	92. The Ultimate Showdown

Jane passed the note to the new girl who sat across from her in the self-esteem class. "You slam?" she'd written.

The girl unfoled the note, scrutinized it, then jotted out an answer before handing back to Jane. She unfolded it: "I slam."

Jane jotted out the address to the Zon and a time - one hour after the end of the self-esteem class. "Be ready," Jane wrote as a final taunt.

The girl, upon reading the final line, mouthed it to herself. Then she turned to Jane and smiled - it was the first time Jane had seen the girl's face move, and the amount of teeth exposed gave her the shivers. "Be ready," she repeated aloud, just above a whisper.

XXXX

Jane tried to forget her earlier nervousness as she strutted upon the stage. Dozens of people cheered as 'Larceny' Lane, their local champion, gracefully bowed before setting up the little arena in the center of the stage.

"Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we have a new challenger!" Upchuck, the MC, smarmed into the microphone. "Jane 'Larceny' Lane has reigned supreme for nearly two years now, so nicknamed because she stole so much from her competitors, least of all their pride. But now, we have a special treat..."

The spotlights pointed back towards the passage Jane had just left. "Hailing from Highland Texas, the Pog Queen of the Pecos, 'Dire' Daria Morgendorffer!"

The crowd went insane as the stoic young woman from Jane's self-esteem class walked in, and the bottom of her stomach dropped out. FUCK! She should have made the connection between the new transfer and the recent shakeup in the online national leaderboards!

Daria walked up to the table where Jane had set up her pogs. She withdrew something from her jacket pocket. Jane's eyes were fixated upon it. It was golden, obviously metallic. The edges were serrated. Daria grasped it by the edges in order to give Jane a closer look: the slammer's face was adorned with a flaming skull, the word 'POISON' was printed beneath it in large letters. A cold sweat broke out on her brow.

Without further ado, Daria lifted the slammer and threw it down upon the stack of pogs before her. "Oh my God, ladies and gentlemen!" Upchuck cried out. "She's flipped them! She's flipped every single pog! In all my years of involvement with this sport, I have never seen a game end with the very first slam! The winner and new champion, 'Dire' Daria!"

The crowd's roars were deafening. It didn't matter to Jane; the only thing she could hear was her heart breaking as she sank to her knees. She hid her face as tears streaked their way down it.

"Hey." Jane looked up from her prone position. "Wanna get a pizza?" Daria asked.

"Do I?!" Jane leapt up, mental anguish at the defeat forgotten, and the two marched off for a post-pog pizza.

XXXXXXXXXX

In honor of the greatest sport of all time. 


	93. Eyepatchgate

Joe Adler sidled up to the witness stand, at which sat the cool, composed Daria Morgendorffer sat. He had her dead to rights, and nobody, not even that shark lawyer of a mother she had, could do anything about it. He gave her a condescending smile before beginning to talk. "Miss Morgendorffer, can you tell us why you were going to the sporting goods store on the day in question?"

"I was writing an article on what the school teams would be wearing this year, as part of my fashion beat for the school paper." Her voice was a bored monotone. Joe hated those.

"But what did you witness at the store?" he asked.

"I saw those two -" She pointed to Joe's clients, Beavis and Butt-head. (Beavis was merrily picking his nose, while Butt-head was reclined in an impromptu nap. Joe had to suppress the instinct to roll his eyes). "-walking out of the changing room in a state of near-undress."

"Could you tell the court precisely what they were wearing, Miss Morgendorffer?"

Her lips trembled ever so slightly - a suppressed laugh? "They were both wearing t-shirts and eyepatches. The eyepatches were not on their eyes."

"Yes, we've all seen the photo." He waved one hand to the enlarged photograph of the dimwitted duo showing they had very little to hide. "The photograph that you took, Miss Morgendorffer. The photograph you later published in your school newspaper, exposing them to embarrassment and sexual harassment from hundreds of their fellow students." His voice began to rise with righteous anger. "Do you have no empathy, Miss Morgendorffer? No conscience? No common sense to tell you what a bad idea this was?" He loomed over her, placing his hands on the railing separating them. "Why did you do it, Daria?"

The corner of Daria's mouth curled up into a smirk. "Actually," she said, "It's about ethics in fashion journalism."

The courtroom went wild with applause, including the judge and jury. Joe looked around and sighed as he returned to his seat, reminiscing on the time he had been offered a position in that firm run by the mafia. 


	94. Jane Scores

"What makes you think a little girl like YOU can play football?" Doug Thompson sneered, leader of the angry parents.

"Title Nine, bitches!" Jane pistoned her arms up and down, middle fingers fully extended.

XXXX

Daria walked with Jane as they travelled to their favorite pizza place after another day at Lawndale High.

"So." Daria began.

"So?" Jane asked.

"How was football practice?" Daria finally asked. She'd waited an hour after school for Jane while her athletic friend drilled with the Lions.

"Oh, it was rough as hell, but it'll be worth it when we fucking cream those Oakwood pricks." Jane punched one fist into her open palm for emphasis.

"Will you have time to study?" Daria asked, anxiously remembering how they'd quarrelled over 'byes' during Jane's time as a runner.

"Relax, Daria, I won't accept any byes," Jane assured her. "Because I've got everything fucking else." She grinned wide, mad with power.

"Define everything fucking else."

"Daria, I'm a skilled football player. In this town, I could shoot the mayor and get away with it." She saw the skeptical look on Daria's face. "Fine, I'll prove it." Some ways ahead of them, walking in their direction, was a police officer. "Hey, Mr. Policeman!" Jane waved.

The cop waved back. "Hello, Miss Lane. Gonna give 'em hell at the big game this Friday?"

"You know it!" Without warning, she hauled back and punched him square in the stomach.

Daria's eyes shot open with horror and concern as the man fell to his hands and knees, gasping for air. After a moment, though, he forced himself to stand back up, and forced himself to laugh. "Heh heh, that was a good one, Miss Lane! Oakwood won't know what hit 'em!" He coughed, and Daria could swear she saw flecks of blood on the hand he used to cover his mouth.

"Later, officer," Jane said, nodding at the compliment as she continued on towards the pizza place.

Daria hurried to catch up with Jane. "What the hell was that?"

Jane put on a South African accent. "Diplomatic immunity!" She put her arm around Daria, hugging her friend close (prompting an uncomfortable look on her face).

"I don't see how assaulting a cop -"

Daria's complaint was cut off as Jane dragged her into the pizza place. "Hey, gimme an extra large with everything," she said to the cashier.

"Right, that'll be..." He looked up, recognizing Jane. "No charge, Miss Lane," he said reverently. "And free sodas, too," he said, plopping down two empty cups for use at the soda fountain by the napkin dispenser.

Daria wordlessly followed Jane as they each got Ultra Colas and sat at their usual booth to wait for the pizza to come out. "You just got a free pizza."

"Yep."

"Free pizza, Jane."

"Yep." Jane was smiling the smuggest smile to ever smug.

"Free. Pizza." Jane simply nodded. Daria unconsciously licked her lips. "...So this is what sexual attraction feels like."

"You got it, 'babe'," Jane said, sliding out from her seat in order to join Daria on her side of the booth, and fully introduce her to the perks of dating a football star.

XXXXXXXXXX

These are two ficlets I posted in the Jane Plays Football IC proposed by Grifter74 on the PPMB, in which the question "What would happen if Jane joined the Lawndale Lions?" was asked. 


End file.
